Defining and Displaying The Human Body Collectors and Classics During The British

Defining and displaying the human body: collectors and Classics during the British
Enlightenment
Author(s): Ellen Adams
Source: Hermathena, No. 187 (Winter 2009), pp. 65-97
Published by: Trinity College Dublin
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23317524
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Defining
and
displaying
the human
body: collectors and Classics

British Enlightenment
during
the
by Ellen Adams
on
literature
exists
of philosophical
body
and
the
individual.
notions of the body, personhood
developing
This
to show how collecting
and
practices
paper attempts
ideas about being human.
Classics
have also shaped
modern
An
extensive
the study of some of London's

artistic and medical
Through
we can better understand
how notions of the body
collections,
and contested.
have been explored, established
Enlightenment
not
transmitted
but they also
house-museums
only
knowledge,
certain
had a large part to play in developing
as
health
and
It
formed
the
such
themes,
beauty.
Enlightenment
the
and
core of British education
beyond.
Enlightenment
during
Scholars at Eton in the eighteenth century spent 88 per cent of
created
it.1 Classics
their class time studying the Classics.2 In adulthood,

the classical
role
in
intellectual
and
elite life,3
an
immense
played
world
all
Arguably,
Enlightenment
the
lens of the
considered
developments
through
of
or
the
ancient
classical
world,
reception.
privileged
legacy
from a variety of
This paper seeks to integrate approaches
enhancing
disciplines,
social
status.
should
including
be
museology,
classical
reception
studies,
1
S. Moser, Wondrous Curiosities: Ancient Egypt in the British Museum (Chicago
and New York 2006), p. 2.
2
NeocLassicism in Britain (Chicago
and
V. Coltman,
the Antique:
Fabricating
continued
London 2006), p. 11-4; this education
during the Grand Tour: V. Coltman
'Classicism
in the English
early nineteenth centuries',
3
J. Spence, Polymetis:
of the Roman Poets and the
library: reading classical culture in the late eighteenth and

Journal of the History of Collections 11 (1999).
or, an Enquiry Concerning the Agreement between the Works
Remains of the Antient Artists; being an Attempt to Illustrate

them mutually from One Another (London
absurd
1747), p. 286, refers to a common,
educated
men
stated
by
(speaking
paradox
mid-eighteenth-century
through
'"That
the greateft difficulty I meet with in underftanding
the claffics
Polymetis):
This over
now, arifes from my having read and ftudied them too much at school"'.
to
a richness of interpretations
of texts that were impossible
exposure
generated
dead
even
the
value
of
through.
Spence
questions
languages,
navigate
learning
although the antiquities 'fpeak to the eyes; and are lefs equivocal,
than the cleareft language can poffibly be' (p. 290).
and more expreffive,
Ellen Adams
66
history of medicine,
archaeology, art history and visual culture.4

followed a distinct
British developments
Eighteenth-century
The focus will be on

trajectory from those on the Continent.5
London because of its undoubted
role as a cultural centre as well
as the political
it was the hub through which ideas,
capital;
information
and indeed
objects were transferred, particularly
house-museums
and
the
newly-established
royal
through
a vital communication
centre
These
provided
such as art
the developing
and emerging disciplines
(or 'long' eighteenth
history and surgery. The Enlightenment
century, moving into the nineteenth)6 witnessed the shift from
which drove
aesthetic to didactic or 'professional'
collections,
institutions.
between
in certain
disciplines
the latter
directions.
of the
part
collection
was
sculpture
rather than a less critical
on aesthetic
This
eighteenth
'in any sense
grounds.
paper
until
not, for example,
that
classical
century
any
It was
explores
a scholarly creation',7
of objects, albeit obtained
assemblage
the
display
of and
attitudes
towards
sculptural fragments by key collectors, and the role of

The museum
remains in defining bodily classifications.
of the body; stripped to the
objectifies representations
ancient
human
setting
skin or the bone, the viewed body may be sexualized
as well as
been
scrutinized
for medical
It
has
purposes.
long
recognized
that art meets medicine
in a variety of ways during
the
this paper seeks to add the classical heritage to

Enlightenment;
the mix. The fragmentary nature of both the sculptures and the
of where the body's
human
remains required a re-evaluation
of fragments, and whether they
lay, the meaning
This paper explores the
should
be reconstructed.
men
had with these various
that
key professional
relationships
in
the context of both
of the human
body
representations
boundaries
could
and
collections
See
and the classical
influence.
the Journal for Eighteenth-Century
Studies
vol.
34
(2011)
for a call
for
interdisciplinary
approaches.
5
For example,
British
and French
behind
their Italian
aristocrats
lagged
counterparts in collecting ancient antiquities.
6
Historians
of the Enlightenment
agree that this period, although recognizable
as a concept, is difficult to pin down in chronological
terms, for example K. O'Hara,
The Enlightenment (Oxford and New York 2010), pp. 23-5.
7
J. Scott, The Pleasures of Antiquity: British Collectors of Greece and Rome (New
Haven and London 2003), p. 169.
Classics
and the human
67
body
1. Collecting, identifyingand classifyingthe body
may be considered the ultimate empirical activity, but

Collecting
the rationale
behind
the selection
of objects
to acquire
and
is
theoretical.8
Classical
were
always highly
display
sculptures
important to aristocrats striving to enhance their social status, to

and to teachers and students of art, architecture
connoisseurs,
and medicine. In particular, collectors wanted to buy fashionable
for display
in country
decoration
houses
or urban
house
although antiquities were not universally admired and
The role classical antiquities
had in enhancing
the
well
known;10 what is
aristocracy's
prestige and social status is
museums,
collected.9
less studied
ideas
about
is the influence, if any, they had on Enlightenment

the human
and aesthetic
body in both medical
terms.
Much
of what
sculpture
derives
Enlightenment
from Roman
Italian
formed
Britons
knew
of
copies
the basis
of classical
classical
of
Greek
British
early
examples.
pieces
Greece was at this time too dangerous to
collections;11 Ottoman
travel in. By the 1770s, the English were the principal buyers of
ancient marble sculpture.12 The context of these objects was
when
fundamentally
changed
museum: the crowd of sculptures
set
inside
stood
British
house
sentry, a silent audience,
8
A. MacGregor,
Collectors and Collections from the
Curiosity and Enlightenment:
Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London 2007).
9
Scott, Pleasures of Antiquity, p. 215. Sir Hans Sloane was notably uninterested
in classical antiquities: I. Jenkins 'Classical
of Time'",
antiquities: Sloane's "Repository
in A. MacGregor
(ed.), Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, Founding Father
1994), pp. 167-73.
of the British Museum (London
10
Marble Mania:
1640-1840
E.g. R. Guilding,
Sculpture Galleries in England
(London
2001), p. 4. She qualifies this, stating: 'collectors laboured under an onus to
demonstrate
taste,
utility
and
universal
benefits,
rather
conspicuous
consumption'.
11
I. Bignamini
and C. Hornsby, Digging and Dealing
For example, Townley's
(New Haven and London
2010).
than
simply
practising
in eighteenth-century Rome
collection
was essentially
Cook,
B.F.
only one fifth-century BC Greek original formed part of his collection:
The Townley Marbles (London,
1985), p. 27.
12
N. Penny, 'Collecting,
interpreting, and imitating ancient art', in M. Clarke
and
N.
Roman;
The Arrogant Connoisseur:

Richard Payne Knight 1751-1824
(eds),
1982), p. 65. Since the Romans had not shipped Archaic kouroi to Italy,
and aesthetes were not initially aware of them. However, there is what
Penny
(Manchester
archaeologists
collection,
appears to be a genuine Archaic Greek kore in Thomas
Hope's
possibly
G. Waywell,
Lever and Hope Sculptures (Berlin
acquired
during his visit in 1799:
demonstrates
1986), p. 41, 79. It is possibly a good Roman copy, but it nonetheless
that collectors were aware of this period of Greek art at this time.
68
Ellen
as well
Adams
as
to be viewed.
Winckelmann
felt that the
objects
beauty of ancient art was 'located in the present day and in the
of the modern observer'.13 In contrast, the Platonic
experience
Theory of Forms,
scholars.14
Hume
such as Beauty, particularly influenced

both materialist
visions,
challenged
French
where
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and idealist or neoplatonic

ones.15 For him, 'the rules of art were established
empirically
consensus
and the test of time'.16 It is clear,
through communal
however, that the relationship between viewer and viewed reveals
itself to be a two-way relationship when set in a museum.

Charles Townley's
which was
collection,
eighteenth-century
to become
the foundation
of the sculpture
collection
of the
British Museum,
Unlike collections destined for

was exceptional.
Park
home was accessible and
Street
country retreats, Townley's
visited by many. He aimed to possess specimens
from every
of ancient
in
art,17 although
they were not displayed
The
rooms
in
which
order.
his
chronological
Townley displayed
collection were painted in rich, dark colours, so that each marble
phase
was
outlined.18 The cluttered look of his Library,

individually
with certain pieces carefully fitted into areas on top of bookcases
and over doorways, paid homage to aesthetic values (Figure 1 but Zoffany 'moved' the heavier pieces
for the purpose
of this painting).19
collection
'with
symmetrically,
and with accompaniments
correct,
the interior
of a Roman
The
to the upper floor library

exhibited
his
Townley
an
classically
arrangement
so admirably
selected, that
in our own
might be inspected
villa
Discus-thrower
metropolis'.20
visible from the front hall down
stood
in the dining room,

a corridor. It was surrounded
by
a venerable
Chambers'
group of sculptures;
painting depicts a
furniture
but cluttered with
stark, undomesticated
space, lacking
13
14
15
E. Prettejohn, Beauty and Art: 1750-2000

Ibid., pp. 76-7.
D.
Hume,
(Oxford
2005),
p. 18.
Four Dissertations
(London
1757).
The Society of Dilettanti:
Archaeology and Identity in the British
Haven
and
London
2009),
(New
p. 99.
Enlightenment
17
Guilding, Marble Mania, p. 10.
18
Cook, Townley Marbles, pp. 26-7; Scott, Pleasures of Antiquity, pp. 201-3.
19
V. Coltman,
and collecting in Charles Townley's
'Representation,
replication
late eighteenth-century
library', Art History 29 (2006).
20
J. Dallaway,
Of Statuary and Sculpture among the Antients: with some Account of
16
J.M.
Kelly,
Specimens Preserved in England
(London
1816),
p. 328.
Classics
and the human
69
body
marble
little,21
published
ghosts (Figure 2). Charles Townley
although he would act as personal guide, and regularly updated
catalogues for his collection.22
house (remodelled
Hope's
early nineteenth-century
in Duchess
Street had sculptures set out with their
1799-1804)
backs against the wall of the gallery, greeting the visitor (Figure
constructed
in his
semi-circular
3).23 The
'Amphitheatre',
Thomas
in Surrey, contained an audience

country house at the Deepdene
of statues, busts and cinerary urns placed on the tiers.24 They
served as props to express learning, status and taste, but rather
than
solely viewed,
they were also viewers. Hope
paid very
careful attention to the relationship between the displayed object
setting.25 He had studied the architecture of

the construction
of semi-circular auditoria as
theatre, advocating
in antiquity. He had sat on the Competition
Committee
for the
and
its theatrical
design of the new Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and had written
articles
on
The Structure of Our
Theatres.26 John Soane's
architectural
house-museum
is likewise theatrical, and remains
on the whole as he had left it. A centrepiece
of the museum
is
the cast of Apollo Belvedere in a space that unifies the upper and
lower areas of the museum (Figure 4) 'into a simulated landscape
of ruins'.27 This is house-museum
the
as theatre, exploring
humans
have
with
their
built
environment.
The
relationship
aesthetic
body
structures
to
is reassessed
protect
in terms of the practical
need
for
it.
of the time also offer insights into the manner

were perceived.
antiquities
Joseph Spence's
Polymetis
Publications
in which
has
been
account
21
(London
22
23
as 'simplistic'.28
It is a rather rambling
described
of the relationship
between Roman poets and art, but
H.
The Townley Gallery

p. 6, 10.
Townley Marbles, p. 7.
Ellis,
of Classic
Sculpture
in
the British
Museum
1846),
Cook,
T. Hope,
Thomas
Household
Furniture
and Interior Decoration,
This
volume
(London
1807).
the strong symmetry of composition
demonstrating
24
Scott, Pleasures of Antiquity, pp. 244-5.
Hope
D.
Watkin,
Thomas
Hope
1769-1831
is
Executed from Designs by

well
illustrated,
extremely
in the exhibits.
and
the Neo-classical
p. 108.
26
Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 57.
27
S. Feinburg,
'The genesis of Sir John Soane's
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 43 (1984),
28
Scott, Pleasures of Antiquity, p. 169.
Idea
(London
1968),
Museum
Idea:
1801-1810',
p. 34.
Ellen
70
was nonetheless
are noted,
well-read
such
as Mild
at the time. Characteristics
archaeology
the literary sources.31
of key gods
Terrible Jupiter,29 with relevant
about the visual arts are informed
and
literary references, and ideas

by classical literary sources.30
a handmaid
Adams
Such
to classics,
an approach
renders classical
serving merely to decorate

not all writers were interested in
Indeed,
studies
'archaeological'
of sculptures.
For Thomas
publishing
'their
was
as
Hope,
overriding importance
symbols of antiquity,
the purpose of which was to inspire new artistic creations which
embodied
their principles
early nineteenth
were handmaid
larger agendas.
In Fuseli's
but were adapted to the demands

of
life'.32
In
this
these
classical
bodies
case,
century
to modernity, again somewhat
passive props to
'The
Artist moved
to Despair
by the
Grandeur
of Antique
in the Kunstaus,
(1778-80:
Fragments'
the artist sits, head in hands, by the broken foot of a
Zrich),
colossal
statue.33 The
and techniques
of the
craftsmanship
drawing,
ancients
inspired not only awe, but also a sense of inadequacy.

could
modern
artists
match
ancient
possibly
of
the
never
mind
it?
Some
artists
representations
body,
surpass
How
resisted
The
the challenge
classicism could offer. William

Hogarth's
not an overwhelming
success
of Beauty was
it
was
because
an
on
attack
possibly
explicit
Analysis
critically,
if not classicism
itself.34 Other artists, however,
connoisseurs,
were more sympathetic
to the attempt to knock ancient art off
its perch - for example,
declaration
that
embracing
Hogarth's
the beauty of living women was greater than the most perfect
29
Spence, Polymetis, p. 53.

For example, Spence, Polymetis, p. 261: 'I fancy Mors was common
enough in
the paintings of old; becaufe fhe is fo frequently mentioned
in a defcriptive manner,
by the Roman poets'.
31
For example, Spence, Polymetis, p. 67 states: 'To return to the eyes and look of
Venus; the poets are fuller as to the former, than any ftatue can be. They had the
30
painters to copy from, as well as the ftatuaries; and could draw feveral ideas from the
life, which are not to be expreffed in marble. The fculptor can only give you the
proportions of things, and one fingle attitude of a perfon in any one ftatue
32
G. Waywell,
The Lever and Hope Sculptures (Berlin 1986), p. 48. See Hope,
Household Furniture.
33
L. Nochlin,
The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor
of Modernity
(London
1994), pp. 7-8.
34
W. Hogarth,
The Analysis of Beauty: Written with a View of Fixing the
1753); Kelly, Society of Dilettanti, pp. 98-111.
Fluctuating Ideas ofTaste (London
Classics
and the human
71
body
artists united the modern

antique Venus.35 However, neoclassical
and ancient
worlds through the body. For example,
Joshua
his
models
and
sitters
into
Reynolds placed
recognizable
poses of
ancient statues, as 'essential prototypes for the contemporary'.36
So too did life imitate art in the 'attitudes' of Emma Hamilton,
wife
of
the
performances
Richard
collector
great
were heavily based
Sir
William
Hamilton.
Her
classical
upon
poses.37
collection
in
(housed
Payne
initially
Knight's
Downton
is not so
Castle, then in 3, Soho Square,
London)
well-known
in terms of its arrangement,
but he published
He
the
first
substantial
in
discussion
extensively.
provided
for the Society of Dilettanti,38
English on classical antiquities
which was very well-received.39
He did not organize
the 63
owner
or
but
his
stated
collection,
sculptures by
commentary
who
owned each piece and how it was acquired. They included

23 from Payne Knight's own collection, and 23 from Townley's,
the others mainly from those of Thomas
Hope and the Marquis
of Lansdowne.
The accompanying
information
also attempted
to place
the object within the Winckelmann

narrative of rise,
of
and
decline
and
to
maturity
antiquities,
identify sculptor and
subject.
Winckelmann's
35
work
stimulated
new,
systematic
and
Analysis of Beauty p. 59. In contrast, the ancient painter Zeuxis

for his Helen,
that no single
parts from five living models
arguing
individual
could reach such perfection on her own: Cicero,
On Invention 2.1; Pliny
the Elder, Natural History 35.64.
Possibly Hogarth (.Analysis of Beauty, p. 13) would
combined
Hogarth,
not disagree with this methodology:

'Fitness of the parts to the defign for which every
individual
thing is form'd, either by art or nature, is firft to be confider'd, as it is of
the greateft confequence
to the beauty of the whole', although 'no exact mathematical
meafurements by lines, can be given for the true proportion of a human body'
36
Scott, Pleasures of Antiquity, p. 210.
37
I. Jenkins and K. Sloan,
Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton
(p. 75).
and
his
Collection
Goethe's
(London
1996),
pp. 252-3.
They quote
report: 'In her he
has found all the antiquities,
all the profiles of Sicilian coins, even the
[Hamilton]
See F. Rehberg, Drawings Faithfully Copied from Nature at Naples
Apollo Belvedere'.
1744) for illustrations.

R. Payne Knight (for the Society of Dilettanti),
Specimens of Antient Sculpture
Greek and Roman:
Selected from different collections in Great
Aegyptian, Etruscan,
Britain, Volume 1 (London
1809). See, for example, N. Penny, 'Richard Payne Knight:
(London
38
a brief life', in M. Clarke
and N. Penny (eds), The Arrogant Connoisseur: Richard Payne

(Manchester
1982), pp. 1-18.
Knight 1751-1824
39
Richard Payne Knight: The Twilight of Virtuosity (The Hague
F.J. Messmann,
1974), p. 134-5.
Ellen Adams
72
methodological
is unclear how
art history, at least in the nineteenth century.40 It

aware British collectors were of Winckelmann's
an English
History during the earlier Enlightenment;
does not appear until 1849.41 Richard Payne Knight
have used not the German
but Italian
original,
translation
appears to
or French
of the Fitzwilliam Museum

do
Disney catalogues
him.43 However, he clearly generated discussion
on
the respective values of idealism and realism in art. Pliny, in line
with his time, believed that Roman realism was better than the
editions.42
The
not mention
of Greek
but for Payne Knight, as for so

excellence was marked by 'the
many during the Enlightenment,
remains
of
Grecian
precious
sculpture; which afford standards of
idealism
classicism,44
in the human
real beauty, grace, and elegance
form, and the
mere
modes
of adorning
it'.45 Roman
was
art, however,
A different approach
imitation of Hellenic.
to realism can be
seen
in the attempt to identify sculptors

art on the basis
of concrete
identified
and
subjects.
Pliny
such
as
evidence
rather than
signatures,
artistic style or special characteristics.46

were prepared to use more subjective
pieces were valued more if they were so
collectors
Enlightenment
- classical
methods
identified.47
Naming
40
Guilding, Marble Mania,

Anton Raphael
Mengs's
D. Irwin, John Flaxman:
41
1796:
'Burying
(2011).
and excavating
shifted
sculptures
p. 9.
Works was
translated
1755-1826
Winckelmann's
(London
the
nature
of
their
into English and published

in
1979),
p. 213. See D. Orrells
History of Art', Classical
Receptions Journal
1,1
M. Clarke and N. Penny (eds), The Arrogant Connoisseur: Richard Payne Knight
1751-1824
(Manchester
1982), p. 124.
43
C. Vout, 'Treasure, not trash: the Disney sculpture and its place in the history
of collecting', Journal of the History of Collecting (2012).
44
J. Isager, Pliny on Art and Society: The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of
Art (London
and New York 1991), p. 140-1.
45
R. Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste (London
Hellenic
attention to bodily proportions
1805),
p. 5; also p. 105. He appreciated
while believing that no beauty is pleasing to all, in contrast to the Platonic Form of
Beauty
Inquiry, pp.
'ideas'. This
marbles
the quality is inherent in the object:

Payne Knight, An Analytical
of the Platonic
See An Analytical Inquiry, pp. 38-9 for discussion
makes his spectacular
dismissal of the 'Elgin' marbles (i.e. the Acropolis
where
12-13.
currently in the British

See, for example, N.
inexplicable.
31 (1949), pp. 298-300.

46
47
Museum)
Pevsner,
even more
as poor Hadrianic
copies
'Richard Payne Knight', The Art Bulletin
Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, p. 156.

E.g. Payne Knight, Specimens, Pl. VII:
this marble is suspected to be of Venus,

beauty, which later artists, in
'though it has nothing of the exquisite and voluptuous
ages of greater refinement, attributed to the goddess of love'. Payne Knight (Pl. VIII)
Classics
and the human
73
body
personhood
considerably, and strengthened the link between the
texts.
It also
affected
the
material
culture
and
literary
of
the
since
the
were
house-museums,
theatricality
sculptures
not anonymous
props but named actors.
London was a small world, and collectors of antiquities, such

as Payne Knight, were aware of the work of surgeons, such as
built up an extensive collection
John Hunter.48 John Hunter
from both human
which
and animal
dissections
is housed
in his house-museum,
of Surgeons
in London
in the Royal College

of the ancient world,
rejected the trappings
(Figure 5).
unlike his brother, the physician William
Hunter.49 In addition
to his anatomical
collection, William Hunter's library included a
He
great collection of classical authors.50 He also obtained a copy of

The Analysis of Beauty in 1752, and had an interest in
Hogarth's
of anatomy.51 In contrast, his collection
the artistic application
of fine art concentrated
on paintings rather than sculptures, and
more
comprised
scenes
religious
classical collection
portraits than classical

is based on small finds such
or
mythology. His
as Roman brothel tokens or Greek and Roman
While
the
classical
tradition
in
coins.52
architecture
and
in the neoclassical
art was widely acknowledged
representational
such
as
the
Hunters
were questioning
movement,
protagonists
its benefit in medicine.
Humoral
medicine
of
ultimately
classical
was
still widely
the
origin
practiced
during
but
there
were
to
these
and
Enlightenment,
challenges
practices
a growing sense of the need to understand

the body's anatomy,
and teaching collections played a vital role in this. Anatomy had
been studied in the ancient world for example, Galen dissected
monkeys.53
also
On
the whole,
refers to the common
however,
confusion
between
the dissection
Bacchus/Plato
of corpses
was
and Socrates/Silenus
in
sculpture.
48
Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry, p. 15. Here, however, Payne Knight refers
to Hunter's assertion that 'the African black was the true original man'.
49
E. Adams, 'Shaping,
and displaying
medicine
and architecture:
a
collecting
of the Hunterian
and Soane museums', Journal of the History of Collecting
comparison
(2012).
50
P. Black,
'Taste
and
the Anatomist:
William
Hunter's
art collections;
his
of art in his library', in P. Black (ed.), "My Highest

paintings and the representation
Pleasures": William Hunter's Art Collection (Glasgow
2007), p. 76.
51
Black, 'Taste and the Anatomist',
p. 92.
52
Black, 'Taste and the Anatomist'.
53
B. A. Rifkin, 'The art of anatomy',
in B.A. Rifkin, M.J. Ackerman
and J.
Ellen Adams
74
not
considered
in the ancient
with the
world,
acceptable
dissection was
exception of Egyptian burial practices.54 Modern
enabled
the
Act
when
of the
Murder
of
dissection
1752,
by
became
for murder, and the

part of the punishment
Anatomy Act of 1832, when surgeons could receive donated or
unclaimed
bodies for dissection.
The corpse was treated as a
corpse
commodity,55 and
sold.56 Pathologists
body parts could be legitimately bought and

the dead body and preserved
'dismembered
the
or by storage in fluid,
fragments, whether by injection
them
into
material
culture'.57
This
is quite the opposite
fashioning
of the material representations
of the human form in sculpture the
in a nearby
dead
were de-personalized,
house
while,
museum, life was breathed into an antiquity.
Human
remains in medical
collections
are, for the most
the named
and
'Unlike
anonymous.
part, de-personalised
the bodies used for students'

patients in published case-histories,
dissections were customarily
referred to as 'subjects',
and rarely
identities'.58
described in terms which reflected their individual
Few human remains have a personal
the unwilling Charles Byrne in John
This
observation
extends
to
some
parts are numbered.

history attached, as does
Body
Hunter's
collection.
collections.
archaeological
During the early days of the British
mummies
were categorized
as curiosities to
Museum,
Egyptian
an extent that they happily
co-existed
with natural
such
curiosities:
human
their 'personhood'
a much lesser
took
or quality of being a sensuous

worth was
(their historical
is
a
clear
contrast
There
later).
again
of 'real' bodies made anonymous,
and
increasingly
recognized
between the perception
bodies, which
'represented'
Collections
role
collectors
invite classification
attempted to identify.
systems that help to define
(eds), Human Anatomy, Depicting the Body from the Renaissance to Today
Folkenberg
(London
2006), pp. 23-5.
54
V. Nutton, Ancient Medicine (Abingdon
and New York 2004), p. 129.
55
R. Richardson,
Death, Dissection and the Destitute: The Politics of the Corpse in
Pre-Victorian
Britain
W. Moore,
The Knife Man:
Blood, Body
2001);
(Chicago
2005).
snatching and the Birth of Modern Surgery (London
56
PhD
S. Chaplin,
'John Hunter and the "museum
oeconomy'",
unpublished
dissertation, King's College London
(2009),
p. 134.
57
Britain
S. Alberti, Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century
(Oxford
58
2011),
Chaplin,
p. 3: my italics.
'John Hunter', p. 131.
and the human
Classics
75
body
the world, as Pliny the Elder recognized.59 His text was known at
least from the twelfth century onward and played a formative
there was a
role in the early days of collecting,60
although
that
much
realization
growing
erroneous.61
was one
Taxonomy
naturalists:
Enlightenment
understand it.62
Classification
hierarchies.
to
of
of
his
information
was
the
greatest pursuits
the world
meant
classify
of
to
also
cultural
and
comparisons
encourages
'Baron
d'Hancarville'
fuelled
the
self-appointed
The
interest in comparative
growing
religion at the time,63 and
the
influenced
and
Townley,
Payne Knight
great collectors
William
whose collection
of Greek vases forms the
Hamilton,
basis
of that in the British
Park
Street
For
Museum.
example, Townley's
next to
objects placed
classical ones, to aid d'Hancarville's
ideas about mystical rites
- 'the room
of
the
basis
all
being
prepared
religions
catalogues
collection
for visitors
Hope
Park
Street
Indian
space to far-fetched
symbolism than to dating or aesthetics'.64 However, it is notable
that no Indian pieces can be seen in Zoffany's famous painting
of Townley sitting among his collection
they are all classical,
and this was the ultimate mark of social status (Figure
l).65
Thomas
to
included
embraced
devote
more
neoclassicism,66
but this can be situated
59
S. Carey, Pliny's Catalogue of Culture: Art and Empire in the Natural History
2003).
L. Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of the
Renaissance Culture (New Haven and London
1999), pp. 66-7.
61
Isager, Pliny on Art and Society, p. 10.
62
H. Ritvo, 'Zoological
taxonomy and real life', in G. Levine (ed.), Realism and
Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Literature and
(Oxford
60
Culture
Wisconsin
aided
(Madison,
1993). The sharp increase in consumerism
M. Kwass,
the world of goods:
consumer
revolution
and
'Ordering
of objects in eighteenth-century
classification
France, Representations 82 (2003),
trend:
87-116.
63
E.g.
al (eds),
2003).
64
between
34).
66
Discovery
the
pp.
responses to the sacred art of India', R. Anderson et

and the Museum
in the Eighteenth Century (London
of Antiquity, p. 206. Payne Knight also sought connections

and Indian erotic pieces: H. de Almeida and G. Gilpin, The Indian
British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India (Aldershot 2006), p. 52.
G. Vaughan,
'The Townley ZofFany: Reflections on Charles Townley and
Scott,
Pleasures
classical
Renaissance:
65
E.g.
his Friends',
'visual
P. Mitter, 'European
Knowledge,
this
Apollo
randomness'
Watkin,
144, 32-5.
It is argued that Townley marks a shift in taste towards

and horizontally
'Townley Zoffany', p.
(Vaughan,
both vertically
Thomas Hope, p. 113.
Ellen Adams
76
within
the wider
Romantic
engaged with
and other eastern cultures.67 He was influenced
Egyptian, Indian
by d'Hancarville's
movement
that also
views on the progress of art,68 with the rooms

displayed according to cultures, from the Egyptians and Indians
to neoclassical
works.
d'Hancarville's
Essentially,
approach
highlighted the relationship between the humans and the divine,
the body and the cosmos.
Attention
to chronological
and
context grew over the course of the nineteenth
geographical
cultural
century,9 although
laden.
classifications
could
still be
value
in surgery and dissection also generated new

Developments
ways of classifying the body. Comparative
anatomy sought to
use animals to help understand
the human body, as comparative
religion offered a framework for situating man in the cosmos.
Medical
also
collections
definition
of what
was
categorize
'normal'
or
the
the
body
through
with
healthy,
pathology
Morbid curiosities
explicitly referring to the abnormal.'0
out in a depersonalized
classification
to
according
'Monstrosities'
or
were
needed
museum
to be
collections
Curiosities
can
based
tended
on
to
the
common
the
emphasise
raise
disease.
themselves
paraded,
paraded
and indeed long before.
during the Enlightenment,71
and
can
classification
curiosities
also
disrupt
'taxonomies
are laid
about,
But freaks
systems:
place; but
unusual'.72
health,
questions
concerning
challenging
medicine, ethics and the body.
an
The theatre of dissection
and house-museums
provided
excellent
67
68
stage
Watkin,
Guilding,
where
representations
Thomas Hope, p. xxi.

Marble
Mania,
p.
12,
36.
Baron
of
the
human
d'Hancarville,
body,
Recherches
sur
1785-6).
l'Origine, VEsprite et les Progrs des Arts de la Grce (London
69
For example, the image entitled 'An assemblage
of works of art in sculpture
and painting from the earliest period to the time of Phydias'
by James Stephanoff
sets out a progressive hierarchy of world artistic achievements.
'Primitive' art,
(1845)
the
is placed at the bottom, while the pinnacle of human achievement,
marbles, is at the top. Indian objects were assumed to be at a lower (and
of art. The Great Chain of Being from natural
earlier) stage of the global development
is
translated
into
the
Great
Chain
of Art: I. Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes
history
such as Indian,
Parthenon
in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800-1939

(London
70
Alberti, Morbid Curiosities, p. 8.
71
P. Youngquist,
Monstrosities: Bodies and British Romanticism
London 2003).
72
K. Arnold,
(Aldershot
2005),
Cabinets
for the Curious:
Looking
Back
1992),
pp. 61-5.
(Minneapolis
at Early English
and
Museums
p. 218.
Classics
and the human
77
body
or sculptural,
demanded
that the viewer reflect
to
and taste. The
life and death, normality
attempt
upon
contrasts
with
the
or
name
systematic
identify
sculptures
In classifying exhibits,
of human
remains.
depersonalization
whether
'real'
humankind
world
(in
is set against
comparative
various
religion)
'others',
and
such
animals
(in
as the divine
comparative
anatomy).
2. The
body bared, viewed

aesthetic and medical
The
and objectified
study of the body
generally implies
nudity. For modern western humans, however, it is unnatural to
serves to 'other'
us not only from
be naked, and clothing
Clark's famous
but also from each other.73 Kenneth
animals,
distinction
between
being
how the body is objectified:

clothes' with the associated
being naked is based on

'to be naked is to be deprived of our
nude
and
embarrassment
or shame, but the
and
confident
is a 'balanced,
body'.74 The
prosperous,
extensive references to classical works, mythology and influence
in Clark's study are notable. In contrast, Berger argues: 'To be
naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others
nude
and yet not recognized for oneself.75 In this sense, all objects on
stripped of context for the benefit of the
display are 'nude',
viewer's interest and/or enjoyment. Viewing the body bestows a
sense of control and even possession
to the viewer.76 However, as
lent exhibits a
we have seen, the theatricality of house-museums
certain voice and presence beyond this.
is a long tradition of art criticism of the body. Pollitt
has suggested four main ways in which ancient writers engaged
with art:77 1) compliers
of tradition, such as Pliny; 2) literary
There
73
R. Barcan, Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy (Oxford and New York 2004), p. 2.

K. Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (Princeton
1956), p. 3.
75
1972), p. 48.
J. Berger, Ways of Seeing (London
76
Foucault charts the emergence of modern clinical medicine, where the body is
an object to be treated, rather than a sick person. M. Foucault,
The Birth of the Clinic:
74
An Archaeology of Medical Perception, translated by A. Sheridan

M.
(London
1973);
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by A. Sheridan
Foucault,
Discipline
in the British
(London
1977). See also J. Brck, 'Monuments,
power and personhood
Institute 7 (2001),
Journal of the Royal Anthropological
p. 652. 'Patient'
from the Latin word meaning
not 'undergoing
suffering and enduring,
treatment' or 'being treated' as understood
today.
77
J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents
(Cambridge
1990).
Neolithic',
derives
Ellen
78
Adams
such as Quintilian;
such as
3) moral aestheticians,
analogists,
Plato and Aristotle and 4) artists, such as Polycleitus
(through
sources such as Galen).78 The classical world handed down ideas
the correlation
beauty and moral

goodness, united in the single Greek word kalos. Beauty is not in
the eye of the beholder,
but in the nature of the beholden.
was
accounted
to
divine
Beauty
support, ugliness to disfavour,
and male beauty contests indicate the Greeks' desire to celebrate
concerning
the body beautiful.79 There

from
nudity and beauty
correlation
between
sensible
is a strong link between male youth,

the Greek Archaic
and a
period,
between
in the classical one.

beauty and proportion
As a concept, ugliness is neither discussed nor depicted as much
as beauty in the ancient world,80 although
there are glimpses
into the dark side of beauty. Seneca the Elder describes how the
Greek painter Parrashius tortured to death an Olynthian
slave
while
of the tormented Prometheus.81

researching his depiction
was not a medical dissection, but a vivisection to observe
the aesthetics of pain.
This
would
have been aware of
Eighteenth-century
gentlemen
sources
when
aesthetics.
Aesthetics
refers to
debating
sensual perceptions, such as pleasure and pain, which are in turn
such
extended
to values
such as beauty
and morality.82
loosely
Winckelmann
addressed
the ambiguous
between
relationship
and
in
his
account
of
In
Laocon.83
beauty
pain
response,
78
Galen, de Placitis Hippocratis et Piatonis 5; Galen, de Temperamentis 1.9.

R. Garland,
The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco
Roman World (London
1995), p. 2; R. Hawley, 'The dynamics of beauty in Classical
Studies on the
Greece', in D. Montserrat
(ed.), Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings:
79
Human Body in Antiquity (London

and New York 1998).
80
The famous passage concerning the ugly, and therefore ridiculed, Thersites is a
notable exception: Homer Iliad 2, 216-9.
81
Seneca, Controversies 10.5.
82
E. Burke, 'A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
in A. Phillips (ed.), A Philosophical
and Beautiful'
(1757),
Enquiry into the Origin of
our Ideas
and
the
of the Sublime and Beautiful (Oxford 2008).

sublime:
medical
and Burke's
gymnastics
Burke related terror, pain and
pp. 58-83.
See A. Sarafianos,
'Pain,
labor,
91
Representations
to the Sublime,
while
aesthetics',
(2005),
danger
suggesting that Beauty arouses love. Kant's division is rather different: for him the
Beautiful offers a detached
pleasure, while the Sublime impresses with the power of
I. Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the
nature, or great, overwhelming
passions:
and the Sublime (Berkeley 1960 [1764]).

on the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of
J. Winckelmann,
'Thoughts
the Greeks'
in H. Nisbet
German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism
(1755),
(ed.),
Herder, Schiller, Goethe (Cambridge
Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann,
1985); A. Potts,
Beautiful
Classics
and the human
79
body
that the ugly and deformed had no place in the

that the civilized did not depict anguish or the
The aloof, disengaged
manner of classical Hellenic
Lessing argued
high arts, and
grotesque.84
art suited the scientific
the
neoclassical
For example,
endeavour.
Enlightenment
artist John Flaxman
showed
restraint in his
violence for refined elegance.85 The body was to
work, avoiding
be studied, aesthetically
and sexually relished. In his Inquiry,
discusses
each
of the five senses separately in order
Payne Knight
of taste, smell, touch, hearing and sight.86 The last receives the
longest entry, and is privileged in the museum
focus on the visual. While he divided perception
setting, with its

into the senses,
he did
for example,
that objects such as sculpture
recognize,
should not be perceived in solely visual terms.87 This work offers
insights into how one key collector at least engaged with the
more theoretical debates that were in circulation
at the time,
such as defining the sublime, taste and beauty, and the relation
the body and the senses.88
In the days before anaesthetic, medical 'aesthetics' takes on a
different level of meaning.
Speed was far more important than
when
empathy
treating patients
surgically, and deliberately
between
Hunter
famously
suffering. William
'familiarises
the heart with a sort
imposing
dissection
that
of necessary
of cutting instruments
upon our fellow
also
in
the
figures
doctor-patient
the use
inhumanity,
creatures'.89
stated
Nudity
On the one hand, a doctor may require a patient to
relationship.
be naked in order to perform a thorough examination.
In this
instance, the doctor objectifies the patient in order to avoid any
Flesh and
the Ideal: Winckelmann

and the Origins of Art History (New Haven
and
1994), p. 4; R. Brilliant, My Laocon: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation
of Artworks (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 2000), pp. 17-8.
84
G.E. Lessing, 'Laocoon,
or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry: Letter to
Nicolai, 26 May 1769', in Nisbet, German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism-, Brilliant,
London
My Laocon, pp. 55-6.

85
Irwin, John Flaxman,
themes
such
Winckelmann,
215.
86
87
88
enter into any depth on

p. 71. Neither did Flaxman
in his Royal
lectures,
nor, despite
'Beauty'
Academy
citing
did he attempt to grasp any historical framework: Irwin, Flaxman p.
as

The
work received
Inquiry.
Inquiry, p. 105.
a range of responses from critics, see Messmann,
Payne Knight, . 105-8.

89
L. Payne, With Words and Knives:
Death,
Richardson,
pp. 30-1;
Medical Dispassion in Early Modern England (Aldershot 2007), pp. 1, 103.
Richard
Learning
Ellen
80
Adams
the
suggestion of desire. On the other hand, Chaplin documents
with sexual depravity'.90
'way in which dissection was equated
vulnerable
Illustrations
of the time of an outstretched,
young
male) surgeon's knife, with his

his work,
indicate
that this
counterparts
keenly observing
undercurrent could be present (Figure 6). Reclining wax bodies
These women
were always female, and known as 'Venuses'.91
often have flowing hair or pearl necklaces;
clearly unnecessary
woman
at mercy of the (always
attributes for anatomical
understanding.
for the physical body,92 in
provides a clear boundary
medical
terms perhaps
more so today than the eighteenth
of
skin
was the most visible indicator
the
Then,
century.93
Skin
into
health, with skin diseases
offering a window
the
ailments.94 Leeches were applied to suck blood through
skin,
and the skin was also a mediator by which the internal balance
internal
Medical
museums
ignore the
has
removed.
Bare
skin is
been
skin, which, more often than not,
the body unclothed,
but skin also serves to veil the body, and
of humours
dissection
could
could
be maintained.
be
a 'form
of unveiling'.95
have
and
Developments
of
the notion
in
an
produced
hygiene
and impermeable
body,96 with the skin as fortress.97
In art, the skin is a surface. Sculpture
may depict veins, tense
the body's
muscles
and flesh, but it is essentially
recording
of the
'when
the
artist
the
surface
surface. However,
represents
dermatology
individuated
90
Human
Remains: Episodes in
'John Hunter',
Chaplin,
p. 80; H. MacDonald,
Human Dissection (Melbourne
2005), pp. 34-9.
91
L. Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between
the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Hemel Hempstead
1989), pp. 44-5.
92
and pictorial surfaces: skin in French art and medicine,
M. Fend, 'Bodily
in M.
Art History 28 (2005);
M. Fraser and M. Greco, 'Introduction',
1790-1860',
and New York 2005),

Greco (eds) The Body: A Reader (London
p. 12;
Collection
exhibition at the Wellcome
(2010).
93
to the body may wish to view it not as an
More recent sociological
approaches
that the self is
'enclosure
or container of the self but rather an interface meaning
The Body: The Key Concepts (Oxford and
always gesturing beyond itself : L. Blackman,
Fraser and M.
'Skin'
New York, 2008), p. 110.

94
B.M. Stafford, Body Criticism:
Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and

1991).
(Cambridge,
to an
Jordanova, Sexual Visions, p. 99. Flayed bodies 'were made congruent
ideal
or
to
a
nakedness,
Stafford,
Criticism,
profound
sincerity';
Body
p.
undeceptive
18.
96
Fend, 'Bodily and pictorial surfaces', p. 312.
97
C. Benthien,
Skin: On the Cultural Border between Self and the World (New
York 2002), p. 42.
Medicine
95
Mass.
and London
and the human
Classics
81
body
or unconsciously
with
he or she is engaging, consciously
questions about the body's borders, and the relations between its
body
interior
and
and
beauty,
the skin."
the exterior'.98
the value
A smooth
Burke
proclaimed
beauty, that I
effential
to
beautiful
that is not fmooth'.100
The
skin
is associated
with
in beauty extends beyond

that smoothness
was 'a quality fo
of smoothness
do
not
now
recollect
any
thing
the
exploited
gentlemen
them
to
the
naked
gave
peruse
first full female nude, the Knidian Aphrodite,
eighteenth-century
the ancient world
opportunities
human
body
The
was presented within a tholos temple to maximize its visibility.101

The form of the female body was also increasingly
hinted at
beneath
women's
the Venus
clothing. Clark refers to the 'draped nudes' of

- even when
Genetrix and the Nereid monument
conventions
demanded
7).102 The
clothing, the body can still be revealed

between nudity and erotic art is
relationship
(Figure
not perhaps surprising, but these objects were originally ritual.
Indian art presented a problem to Enlightenment
gentlemen in
that its erotic art was part of the religious sphere, and not just a
side-show
for the enjoyment

of privileged males.103 The ritual
origins of classical art appeared to be less of a hurdle for them to
surmount, or was simply ignored.10"1 More recently, the small size
of the genitalia
of the male statues
convention
the absence
indicating
circumstances
breach
where
of social
a ritual context.
into
new,
arousal
etiquette';105
Neoclassical
non-ritual,
has
of
been
'as a
explained
in
sexual
awareness
be inappropriate
and a
these were objects that belonged in
artists were able to set this nudity
would
mythological
context.
For
example,
98
Fend, 'Bodily and pictorial surfaces', p. 311.

See Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry p. 60ff for a discussion of smoothness.
100
E. Burke, A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful (London
1767), p. 213.
101
M. Squire, The Art of the Body: Antiquity and Legacy (London
and New York
99
2011), pp. 94-6.

102
103
Caygill,
122.
104
The Nude, p. 77.

P. Mitter, 'European
responses to the sacred art of India', in R. Anderson, M.
A. MacGregor
and L. Syson (eds), Enlightening the British (London
2003), p.
Clark,
This failure to contextualize

classical art as ritual has been discuss by J. Eisner,
and ritual: reflections on the religious
of classical
art', The
'Image
appreciation
Classical Quarterly 46 (1996).
1051. Jenkins and V. Turner, The Greek Body (London
2009), p. 15.
82
Ellen Adams
Rubens
the Judgement
of Paris, with the
depicting
in
it gave to depict not one but three goddesses
opportunity
all
nude
now
in
the
National
(see
varying poses,
examples
Gallery),
Canova's
relished
while
some
found
such
'too naked'.106
depictions
Venus was commissioned
to be 'more strictly neo
Hope
a request that implied greater nudity.107
Coltman
has argued convincingly
that we might move
classical',
Haskell
and
Penny's
Classical
'Taste
and
the
'Sex
and
the
to
Antique:
the
an
from
Lure
of
accurate
Sculpture'
Antique',
on the lack of investigation in previous scholarship on
the rather more risqu or lewd lechery over classical sculpture,
especially in private house museums.108 Coltman
points to the
comment
strong desire of early collectors to touch these objects of beauty
they were not just to be gazed upon. The bachelor Townley

joked that his favourite bust of his sculptural family, Clytie, was
his wife.109 Similarly,
work on
Payne Knight's
comparative
human
was
sexuality and body parts (notably male genitalia)
originally intended to be restricted to members of the all-male
elite Society of Dilettanti.110 It was a different matter when such

in the public sphere. In Figure 1, the
objects were displayed
sculpture of a nymph in an erotic tussle with a satyr is raised for
better view
by the men in this private, intimate setting.111 The

British Museum's
inventory of 1842 indicates that this piece was
not
of its eyebrow-raising
on account
displayed,
presumably
- such
subject matter.112 Some pieces were actually 'cleaned up'
as the restoration of Blundell's
into a sleeping
hermaphrodite
Venus,113 and the addition
of fig leaves on some male statues.114
106
M. Bull, The Mirror of the Gods: Classical Mythology in Renaissance

Art
(London
2005), p. 348.
107
Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 39.
108
V. Coltman,
Classical Sculpture and the Culture of Collecting in Britain since
1760 (Oxford, 2009), p. 171.
109
This was also the piece that he grabbed in flight during the anti-Catholic
Gordon Riots (Cook Townley Marbles, p. 15).
110
R. Payne Knight, An Account of the Remains
1786).
111
of the Worship ofPriapus
(London
See G. Vaugham,
Apollo 144,
his Friends',
'The Townley Zoffany: Reflections on Charles Townley and

no. 417, 32-5 for a discussion
of this painting. Vaugham
approach to display as an exercise in Visual randomness'.
describes Townley's
112
votive
Cook,
Townley Marbles, p. 16. Similarly, the penis of the 'Priapeid
statue' was removed at some point during the nineteenth century, while under the care
of the British Museum
(Cook,
Townley Marbles, p. 29).
113
Classical Sculpture, p. 111-3.
Coltman,
Classics
men
and the human
exercised
in
naked
83
body
the
Greek
gymnasium
and Payne Knight noted that ancient
(gymnos means naked),
artists were able to observe the body in action in this way.115
of heroic status in the ancient
Nudity was also an indicator
Young
Greek
mode
shift when
of representation.116 Attitudes towards male nudity

we move into the Roman era. 'The Roman cultural
associated
undress
with
ideas
about
vulnerability,
all slavery'.117 The
first heroic, nude
criminality, and above
statues of individuals
are the Tyrannicides,
set up posthumously
imaginary
during the early classical period. True portraits are not a marked
feature of Greek sculpture, but became popular in Roman times.
the realism or likeness of the individual,
and
They embraced
It is
'confront the issue of truthfulness of representation'.118
therefore impossible
to generalize about ancient representations
of the human form, and it is unsurprising
that its influence is
mixed.
patriotism and military masculinity were
Eighteenth-century
not best illustrated by Hellenic
dress. Here,
nudity or Roman
the translation
of classical
ideals into modern
discourse
was
unsuccessful.
James Wolfe (1760-3)

in Westminster Abbey depicts the dying hero with his modesty
covered by drapery, and the 'winged Fame visiting from heaven
to crown
Monument
to General
the naked, dying martyr-hero in a scene of quasi

reflects the transfer of the rituals and iconography
of
deification
sainthood
and
martyrdom
The
The
to
the
culture
of
national
heroism'.119
combination
of allegory and realism did not always work, as

of Captain Rundle Burgess
Hoock explains with the Monument
in St Paul's Cathedral.120 The first fully-public naked statue in
London
furore),
(1822)
located
Wellington's
Wellington,
114
was
home
of Achilles
on
the
at
corner
Apsley
and he is associated
(with
of
House.
fig-leaf
Hyde
It was
with heroic
added
after a
Park
opposite
dedicated
to
nudity, rather than
Classical Sculpture, p. 251.

Payne Knight, Specimens, p. xv.
116
Coltman, Fabricating the Antique, p. 8.
117
Squire, The Art of the Body, p. 128.
118
R. Brilliant, Portraiture (London
1991), p. 13.
119
H. Hoock, Empires of the Imagination:
Politics, War, and the Arts in the British
Banks' sculpture
of
World, 1750-1850
(London
2010),
p. 164. See also Thomas
in St Paul's Cathedral.
Captain Richard Brundle Burgess (1802)
120
Hoock, Empires, pp 165-6; Irwin, Flaxman, p. 155.
115
Coltman,
84
Ellen Adams
represented as naked himself.121 In contrast, his enemy Napoleon

commissioned
a naked statue of himself in the poise of Mars,
with
was
again
fig-leaf to protect his modesty. This concept
mocked at its unveiling, since contrasts were drawn between his

stature and that of the perfect body. To add insult to injury, this
statue now stands in Apsley House, jammed
under a staircase.
nakedness
Napoleon's
has turned
from heroic
to
empowerment
something much more vulnerable.

The nude body is distinctive to classical sculpture, where it
was deposited
in ritual contexts or Roman
to
displays. Moved
the studious
and decorative
settings of the Enlightenment
the aesthetics
were framed in a different way.

the
of
role
the
of
senses, nude representations
Beyond exploring
the body presented a discussion
point for erotica and heroism,
house-museum,
collections
reassess what
especially in private settings. Medical
means to be naked, since they so often depict the body 'bared'
its skin. It raises the question of the boundaries
of the body,
of the human form
below, but the sexualisation
expanded
medical
environments
objectification
how
the
further
of the body.
3. Art into medicine:

Art and
is
medicine
body
the classical
implication
of
it
of
as
in
the
view
worked
closely together towards redefining

in a variety of ways.122 The
understood
witnessed
the split between
art and
period
was
Enlightenment
but the key protagonists were
science, with further subdivisions,
still able to engage with developments
in other fields. Leonardo
da
Vinci,
but
his science
and
Raphael
Michelangelo
for
their
art.123
Hume
knowledge
argued
presents to the eye the most hideous and
Venus
121
122
medicine
anatomical
gained
that the 'anatomist
disagreeable
objects;
to the painter in delineating
even a
in
to
is,
case,
Accuracy
every
advantageous
is useful
or an Helen...
Coltman,
Fabricating the Antique,
For example, L. Jordanova, 'The
in the work of Charles
pp. 8-9.
of the human body: art and

representation
In B. Allen (ed.), Towards a Modern Art World
Further relevant links between art and medicine
Bell',
and London
(New Haven
1995).
include the bust of Hippocrates
in Townley's collection.
123
A. Wear, 'Early Modern
in L.I. Conrad
et al (eds),
The Western
Europe',
Medical Tradition (Cambridge
The Anatomist Anatomisd:
An
1995); A. Cunningham,
Experimental
265-75.
Discipline
in Enlightenment
Europe
(Chicago
and
London
2010),
pp.
and the human
Classics
85
body
In
Britain,
beauty...'.124
Enlightenment
anatomical
books and a skeleton in his studio,
kept
and, as a student
to the
exposed
would
have
been
Royal Academy,
William
In
and
Hunter's
lectures.125
turn, dissection
physician
'the opening up of a body was a ritual act, a performance staged
of
the
Flaxman
within carefully monitored

frameworks
for particular audiences
- almost a work of art in
of legal and religious regulation"26
itself.
back to life,
power to bring the dead
cadavers
and
'animated
strutting across
depicting flayed corpses
life
the landscape'.127
Wax
bodies
and
death,
represented
Artists
have
to
'attesting
the
truth
common
and
in
facilitating
deception'.128
They were
and in the
Italy
eighteenth-century
wax models
German
states.129 Anatomical
nineteenth-century
often had their eyes open, engaging the viewer and appearing
real body parts). Here, 'the
strangely alive (unlike depersonalized
between
medicine
and
art
were repeatedly crossed
boundaries
particularly
and of display', and the models

to the wonder of god's creation.130
casts made from flayed bodies, provided information
Ecorchs,
for both artists and student doctors.131 While the classical statue
both
could
in terms of production
also stand as testament
provides
corchs
available
'a
of physical
and aesthetic
paradigm
perfection',
reveal
which
were otherwise
'myological
insights
anatomist
and student of
only to the professional
medicine'.132
124
William
Hunter's
corch
named
'Smugglerius'
Hume, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (London

1758), p. 285.
Irwin, Flaxman, p. 119.
126
M. Kemp and M. Wallace,
Bodies: The Art and Science of the
Spectacular
Human Body from Leonardo to Now (London
2000),
p. 23; see also M. Bleeker (ed.),
the
Live:
and
Theatre
(Amsterdam
2008).
Performance
Operating
Anatomy
127
Rifkin, 'The art of anatomy', p. 7. See also D. Petherbridge and L. Jordanova,
The Quick and the Dead: Artists and Anatomy (London
1997).
128
P. Philbeam, Madame
Tussaud and the History of Waxworks (London
and New
125
D.
York 2003), p. 1.
129
S. Alberti,
'Wax bodies: art and anatomy

in Victorian
medical
museums',
Museum History Journal 2 (2009),
p. 7.
130
MacGregor,
Curiosity and Enlightenment, p. 167; see also Kemp and Wallace,
Bodies.
Spectacular
131
Hunter
at the Royal
Zoffany's
portrait of 'William
anatomy
teaching
(c. 1775) depicts a plaster corch in the common
Academy'
pose of one arm raised,
and the artist Joshua Reynolds is in the audience. Also, see F. Haslam, From Hogarth to
Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Liverpool
1996).
132
M. Postle, 'Flayed for art: The corch figure in the English art academy',
British Art Journal 5 (2004),
p. 55.
The
Ellen Adams
86
(taken from the body of an executed criminal) was forced into

the position of the Roman sculpture Dying Gaul. Rather than
celebrating the beauty of the human form in representative art,
he turned the body into material
culture in order to help
understand
how
it functioned.
It has even been
sculptural
'implicitly
fragments
practices of anatomists'.133
For the protagonists
behind
there was
a further consideration.
of
remains
these
professions,
emerging
Medical
and archaeological
with our
bring us face-to-face
between life and self. Collections
mortality and the relationship
- the
can also be used as a strategy for immortalization
presence
of the owner after his death - as seen by the bust of John Hunter
displays
human
legitimated
suggested that
the collecting
his museum
today overlooking
crucial concern for John Soane.
empire. Immortality was also a

He rejected the two collections
of John Saunders and John Sainsbury, since they came with the
condition
that the collections
would
remain
coherent
and
associated
with the original

of his life -
collector.134 'His'
an extension
collection
was to be
since he left no proper heir.

Room
the Apollo
opposite
especially
placed in the Dome
Belvedere, Soane said 'it is a gift to posterity, for which many a
future race will be grateful'.13 Soane also had a great interest in
and the dead body.136 He incorporated
mortuary architecture
Of
his bust,
catacombs
a
and
into his home
real
obtained
pet dog,
from Flaxman,
and a death-place
for a fictional monk
human
skeleton,
Fanny. Soane
placed
in a wooded
Cell.137
cupboard
in the Monk's
All
were developing
under
the shadow
of
professions
even if they were actively rejecting that tradition, as in
the trappings of classicism,
anatomy. Even so, many embraced
such as William
Hunter, unlike his brother John. There was a
Classics,
need
of
133
teaching
collections
when
carving
out
these
new
Alberti, Morbid
Curiosities, p. 72.
S. Feinberg Millenson,
Sir John Soane's Museum (Ann Arbor 1987), pp. 86-8.
135
J. Soane, A Description of the House and Museum on the North Side of Lincoln's
Inn Fields, the Residence of Sir John Soane, Architect (London
1835), p. 45.
136
D. Watkin
The Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge
(ed.) Sir John Soane:
134
2000),
lecture 4.
137
P. Thornton
and H. Dorey, A Miscellany

of Objects from Sir John Soane's
Consisting of Paintings, Architectural Drawings and Other Curiosities from the
Collection of Sir John Soane (London
1992), p. 58.
Museum:
and the human
Classics
but the world
disciplines,
interaction
4. Bodily
Descartes
between
was still small
the main protagonists.
boundaries,
fragments
87
body
enough
and reconstructed
to allow
close
wholes
(1596-1650)
presented a new way of thinking about
the body, by separating mind and matter. Traces of this idea were
- certain classical authors and artists
circulating before Descartes
were happy to separate the body and soul. Pliny the Elder stated
that 'although
of the
Myron took pains in his representation
he
did
not
the
of
the
mind', illustrating a
body,
express
feelings
between
and
divide
mind
body.138 Descartes
that our ego is entirely internal, rather than being
to an external cosmic
order (as in Christian
and
pre-Cartesian
further argued
connected
Platonic thought): the self is bounded,

and works
non-relational,
like a machine.139 Not everyone followed Cartesian thought. For
in the seventeenth
century, argued that: 'The
example, Hobbs,
Universe ... is Corporeal,
that is to say, Body ... and that which
is not Body, is no part of the Universe'.140 These debates were
notably abstract, resting on the immateriality of the soul,141 and
did not concern aesthetics. Descartes rarely referred to beauty or
the arts, and his emphasis on reason over the senses has pervaded
thought.142 It is collectors, such as Payne Knight,
insights to themes such as nudity, realism and
collections
can also articulate how the body and
contemporary
who can add
and
health,
person may be demarcated.

Since the Renaissance,
defined
138
as 'a bounded
139
It can, however,
to be found in Platonic
How
corporeality
Pliny the Elder, Natural
1991), p. 315.
the autonomous
individual
that is assumed
History, Bk 34:
58,translated
has been
to 'end'
by J.F. Healy
with
(London
be argued that the dualism of the body-soul split was already

and Christian thought (R. Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason:
Transformed the Way We See Our Bodies and Souls (London
the Enlightenment
B. Morris,
p. 28-43;
in Cultural
Anthropology of the Self: The Individual
between spirit and
1994), ch. 2). Galenic medicine distinguished
Perspective (London
body, but the spirit pervaded the body rather than being a separate entity.
14
y Hobbes,
Leviathan,
or, the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth
2003),
Ecclesiatical
and Civil (London

1710 study on A
1651),
p. 371. George Berkeley's
Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge did not convince many, but it
does offer one perspective that makes no mind/body distinction.
141
in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford
J. Yolton, Thinking Matter: Materialism
1983).
142
(New
M. Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical

York 1966).
Greece to the Present Day: A Short History
88
Ellen Adams
all areas of life permeates

with the
political, in response to absolutist models, economic,
rise of the free market, and, reaching a height with Freud,
But this is not to say that parents, children,
psychological.144
siblings and partners would be happy with the notion that their
the
skin.'143 This
individualism
and interests stop 'with the skin'. In

responsibilities
the
terms,
body does not contain the entire person,
sociological
who can influence the world through time, space, relationships
and objects. Collections
offer a reminder of this, when people
agency,
are turned into objects, and objects are personified.

In collections,
bodies
are often
however,
fragmented,
whether damaged
or
dissected
body parts. Medical
sculpture
museums
particular
body parts that become mtonymie for

museums
areas or diseases, whereas in archaeological
are
for
individuals.
synecdochic
They throw
fragments
accommodate
sculptural
into question
what
we
by a complete,
perfect,
natural or even normal body. 'All the fragments on display
diseased body ... no longer
together make up a multi-authored,
of
an individual
... but rather a dividual body, that is, composed
different
might
separated
parts
considerations
Anthropological
mean
from
different
of the
dividual
sources'.143
non
explore
or prehistoric societies,146 but the ideas can be applied
in the
closer to home, as illustrated by healing votives dedicated
ancient and modern West.147 A collection
of pieces begs the
of
whether
and
reconstructed into
could
should
be
they
question
western
a whole.
143
out that the

Fraser and Greco, 'Introduction',
p. 12. Brck has pointed
of free will is mainly taken to be a characteristic of upper-class white males,
possession
while other categories of person are not seen as such free agents. J. Brck, 'Material
The relational construction
of identity in Early Bronze Age burials in
metaphors:
Ireland and Britain', Journal of Social Archaeology, 4 (2004),
p. 312.
144
Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 3.
145
Alberti, Morbid Curiosities, p. 8.
146
M. Strathem, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with
in
see also ]. Chapman,
1988);
(Berkely
Fragmentation
Society in Melanesia
Archaeology: People, Places and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of South-Eastern Europe
(London
2000).
147
J. Hughes,
'Fragmentation
Social History of Medicine 21 (2008);
as metaphor
M. Umbach,
in the classical
healing sanctuary',
and the
Enlightenment
'Other':
visual culture', Art History 25
thoughts on decoding
eighteenth-century
The collector
William
Scott, Pleasures of Antiquity, pp. 186-7.
(2002),
p. 335;
Hamilton
had a collection
of wax-model
formed part of Italian
phalli, which
ceremonies
'Classicism,
in remote areas.
Classics
and the human
89
body
and
was not only about
dividing
Enlightenment
sickness to health,
classifying the world, but also restoring it
There
and
to
works.
were
complete
sculptural
fragments
restorers
in
the
and
from
the
professional
eighteenth century,
The
late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, 'the paradoxical

mix of
will mark the whole
mutilated
larger-than-life and corporeally
field of rediscovered
ancient
sculpture, defining an antiquity that

as it is ruined, as mythical as it is immediate
to
is as magnificent
the modern viewer's
of restoration,
practice
in his Specimens.
the
Payne Knight opposed
experience'.148
and was careful to mark reconstructions
Notably, the Torso Belvedere was never restored.

of ancient sculpture and
'If the Torso Belvedere is the paradigm
is
the
hero
of
the
Michelangelo
tragic
fragment, that is because
he based
his career in part on what could be imagined and not

seen or because he appeared
so often to be unable to produce
statues more complete than the fragments that inspired him'.149
served as the starting point
- an extensive re-evaluation
the torso
However,
'Hercules
and Hebe'
for Flaxman's
of the ancient
piece.
Therefore,
from an emphasis
on the division
moving
between body and soul, collections
of antiquities
and human
remains raises issues concerning
the boundaries
of the body and
the person. The skin is generally absent in medical situations,
but forms the surface, or container, in art ones; the visitor faced
with
such
would
contrasts
develop
the
beyond
a notion
concerns
of personhood
of the
time.
purely
philosophical
bodies
are often incomplete,
and
Represented
nature of bodies is therefore framed in a challenging
the
dividual
light.
Conclusion
This
has been
influences
on modern
account
notions
and Classics.
collecting
past did
instead,
a discursive
dialogue with the classical

or outright rejection;
borrowing
the Enlightenment,
and
scholars, professionals
practices
not involve
during
gentlemen
of two neglected but crucial

of the individual
and the body:
negotiated
The
blind
new
disciplines
through
the lens of this
148
were discovered by the
Barkan, Unearthing the Past, p. 123. The Tyrannicides
of the sixteenth century but restored much later: Barkan Unearthing the
beginning
Past, p. 175.
149
Barkan Unearthing the Past, p. 207.
Ellen
90
overarching
legacy.
While
Adams
the
classical
influence
was
it was also very varied. There was a

undoubtedly
important,
discourse
with
both
the literary and material survivals of
healthy
the ancient world. There is much recent literature on various
areas explored in this paper - such as the Grand Tour, history of
and classical
I have attempted
to bring
medicine,
reception.
together in the vibrant case
a period when the boundaries
London,
them
study of Enlightenment
between disciplines were
but
there
was
still
interaction
between the key
hardening,
great
within close
medics
and
collectors
moved
Artists,
protagonists.
social
classical
their
elitism
circles,
articulating
through
references.
Collection
were intense during this time. The

practices
of
process
naming or labelling objects in displays was standard
for antiquities,
while medical
remains were deliberately
de
- the
of
was
somewhat
more
personalized
body parts
display
palatable if they were objectified to the extent that they became
The human form could also be set against opposing
anonymous.
such
as the divine and animal worlds in comparative
spheres,
collections.
It helped
to study the body if taxonomies
were
drawn
up, and it also helped if it was presented naked. Beyond

the aesthetic tension between
medical
nudity and nakedness,
collections
also called for a re-evaluation
of the nude form - in
this setting, the skin is clothing
to be removed.
King's
Ellen
Adams
College
London
Classics
Figure
1. Johann
and the human
Charles
Zoffany,
of Burnley
courtesy
& Museums.
Gallery
By
Towneley
Borough
body
in his sculptural
Council,
gallery
Towneley
(1782).
Hall
Art
Ellen
Adams
Street,
Park
at
Room
Dining
the
in
Museum.
Collection
British
Townley
The
The
(1794-5).
Chambers,
Westminster
William
2.
Figure
Classics
Figure
3. Thomas
Household
57.Q.
1.
and the human
The
Hope,
Furniture
Statue
Copyright
The
and
93
body
Gallery,
Internal
Duchess
Victoria
and
Street
Decoration.
Albert
(1807),
NAL
Museum,
Plate
Pressmark
London.
1,
Ellen
94
Figure
4.
The
Dome
bust
of Soane
Ole
Woldbye,
Museum.
Room
in
looking
Adams
the
Soane
by courtesy
Museum,
the Apollo
of the Trustees
towards
from
behind
Belvedere.
of Sir John
the
Photo:
Soane's
Classics
and the human
body
Charles
of
skeleton
the
Surgeons.
above
of
Hunter
College
John
Royal
of
the
bust
at
the
Museum
showing
Hunterian
interior,
The
Museum
2005.
c.
Hunterian
Byrne,
5.
Figure
Ellen
Figure
6. Thomas
Museum
Rowlandson,
at the Royal
The
Adams
Persevering
Surgeon.
of Surgeons.
The
Hunterian
College
Classics
Figure
7.
Statue
from
and the human
the
Nereid
97
body
Monument.
The
British
Museum.

Defining and Displaying The Human Body Collectors and Classics During The British

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Defining and displaying the human body: collectors and Classics during the British

body: collectors and Classics

the study of some of London's

their class time studying the Classics.2 In adulthood,

library: reading classical culture in the late eighteenth and

Remains of the Antient Artists; being an Attempt to Illustrate

and more expreffive,

archaeology, art history and visual culture.4

The focus will be on

sculptural fragments by key collectors, and the role of

this paper seeks to add the classical heritage to

and the classical

the Journal for Eighteenth-Century

and the human

1. Collecting, identifyingand classifyingthe body

may be considered the ultimate empirical activity, but

important to aristocrats striving to enhance their social status, to

is the influence, if any, they had on Enlightenment

sentry, a silent audience,

The Arrogant Connoisseur:

such as Beauty, particularly influenced

beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and idealist or neoplatonic

itself to be a two-way relationship when set in a museum.

Unlike collections destined for

outlined.18 The cluttered look of his Library,

to the upper floor library

in the dining room,

E. Prettejohn, Beauty and Art: 1750-2000

Specimens Preserved in England

and the human

in Surrey, contained an audience

setting.25 He had studied the architecture of

in terms of the practical

of the time also offer insights into the manner

The Townley Gallery

and Interior Decoration,

Executed from Designs by

at the time. Characteristics

literary references, and ideas

serving merely to decorate

but were adapted to the demands

inspired not only awe, but also a sense of inadequacy.

classicism could offer. William

Spence, Polymetis, p. 53.

and the human

artists united the modern

owned each piece and how it was acquired. They included

the object within the Winckelmann

Analysis of Beauty p. 59. In contrast, the ancient painter Zeuxis

not disagree with this methodology:

1744) for illustrations.

a brief life', in M. Clarke

and N. Penny (eds), The Arrogant Connoisseur: Richard Payne

art history, at least in the nineteenth century.40 It

of the Fitzwilliam Museum

but for Payne Knight, as for so

in the attempt to identify sculptors

artistic style or special characteristics.46

Guilding, Marble Mania,

into English and published

History of Art', Classical

the quality is inherent in the object:

currently in the British