Relief in the round : terracotta classicism and the Homeric friezes of Ickworth House

Abstract

A growing body of work examines the British elite’s engagement with sculpture in the long eighteenth century, focusing especially on free-standing works. This article adopts a different angle by exploring the use of relief sculpture attached to a building’s exterior. For its case study, it discusses the remarkable programme of Homeric scenes modelled in terracotta, stucco and Coade stone that runs around the central rotunda of Ickworth House in Suffolk, which are largely based on John Flaxman’s celebrated illustrations. Falling somewhere between art and architectural history, relief tends to be regarded as a secondary or ornamental mode, yet it is productive to study the form for the different opportunities it affords artists and patrons. While individual relief panels have received attention in interior settings such as sculpture galleries where the form’s pictorial effects are foregrounded, this article is more interested in relief’s narrative qualities and the ways it blurs distinctions between building and sculptural object. Instead of partitioning the study of sculpture into interior and exterior or house and garden, this article explores the Italian and Hellenic influences at play at Ickworth, which enable its series of reliefs to enjoy an active, reciprocal relationship with the building to which they are attached.