. The lives of the British sculptors, and those who have worked in England from the earliest days to Sir Francis Chantrey. withthe result of his labours. The sculptors seven years sojourn in Rome had beenproductive of far greater benefits to him, as an artist,than can be estimated by the relatively few commissionshe received or the insignificant amount of money hemade. It had enlarged his ideas ; it had settled hisartistic principles ; it had qualified him to estimate thetruth of abstract beauty ; in a word it had formed ofhim, from natural material imbued with innate classicism,a classic in p
. The lives of the British sculptors, and those who have worked in England from the earliest days to Sir Francis Chantrey. withthe result of his labours. The sculptors seven years sojourn in Rome had beenproductive of far greater benefits to him, as an artist,than can be estimated by the relatively few commissionshe received or the insignificant amount of money hemade. It had enlarged his ideas ; it had settled hisartistic principles ; it had qualified him to estimate thetruth of abstract beauty ; in a word it had formed ofhim, from natural material imbued with innate classicism,a classic in practice as well as in theory. He had mixedwith artists and patrons, with men of genius and menof fashion; he had studied with reverent care thewonders with which Rome and its surroundings abound ;he had, too, been elected a member of the Academiesof Florence and Carrara ; and he was now ready toreturn to England. The moment for doing so, 1792, * Cunningham says that Flaxman must have lost some hundreds overthis work, but that he never made any complaint. The group was placedat Ickworth, Lord Bristols seat in < O o f-H z O z < Sx< FLAXMAN 245 seems to have been chosen for other reasons than the factthat he had now done and seen all he wanted to see anddo : the country was becoming unsettled ; NapoleonBonapartes personality had already passed the Alps,and events were moving too quickly to allow of a peacefulstay for a foreigner—especially an Englishman—beingmuch longer possible in Italy. Cunningham gives aninteresting anecdote, as related to him by Flaxman,as illustrating the curiously gullible nature of the Frenchpeople with regard to the intentions of Napoleon atthis period. I remember, said the sculptor, a night or twobefore my departure from Rome that the Ambassadorof the French proudly showed us, at an evening party,a medal of Buonaparte. * There, said he, is the herowho is to shake the monarchies of the earth, and raisethe glory of the Republic I look
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