'By Heaven Inspired': a marble bust of Handel by Roubiliac rediscovered.

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George Frideric Handel, Louis Francois Roubiliac - Cover story

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'By Heaven Inspired': a marble bust of Handel by Roubiliac rediscovered.

The 250th anniversary of the death of the German-born British Baroque composer, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), has been marked by the recent rediscovery of an important lost portrait of him in marble by the great 18th-century sculptor from France, Louis Francois Roubiliac (1702-62), who almost certainly arrived in England in 1730 and stayed there until his death. Roubiliac is particularly well known for his handling of marble, and his portrait busts and monuments are among the most outstanding works of European sculpture of the 18th century. While the bust (Pls 2, 3), which is published for the first time here, seems not to have been known to scholars working on Roubiliac, its existence had been recorded in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century: the absence of any published image of the bust before now may, however, have contributed to these references being overlooked. The bust depicts Handel bareheaded and incorporates in its socle (base) the epithet 'By Heaven Inspired'. The bust was based partly on a face mask of the musical genius that was once thought to have been taken, presumably, within hours of his death, but is more likely to have been taken in Handel's lifetime. Save for the figure of the composer on Roubiliac's marble monument to him in Westminster Abbey (Pl 1) and a plaster medallion profile portrait of Handel in the Sir John Soane Museum, (1) the portrayal of the composer bareheaded in the rediscovered marble bust differs from Roubiliac's other portraits of Handel, all of which depict the sitter in either a soft cap or a full wig.

In the mid 1980s John Mallet and Malcolm Baker identified a terracotta bust that is directly related to the rediscovered marble (although it had been argued that the terracotta was only a cast, presumably from a mould taken off an un-located model by Roubiliac), and while a white bust of Handel portrayed without a wig or cap had been recorded in the Royal Collection at Buckingham House (later Buckingham Palace) by William Pyne in 1819, neither its relationship to the terracotta bust nor its authorship was clear. It is now possible to state that the bust recorded by Pyne was not by the same sculptor who made the terracotta, and that the latter, far from being only a cast made from a mould, is in all probability the original model by Roubiliac for the rediscovered marble bust.

Roubiliac and Handel

The association between Roubiliac and Handel was probably the sculptor's most important professional relationship, and it was certainly his most enduring. It commenced with his statue of Handel for Vauxhall Gardens, 1738, which effectively launched Roubiliac's career as an independent sculptor following the extensive public praise the statue (Pl 4) received immediately upon its installation. (2) It ended with Roubiliac's monument to Handel, which was among the last major commissions Roubiliac received or accepted, finally being 'opened' in Westminster Abbey in July 1762, six months after the sculptor's death and more than three years after the death of Handel.

The monument was commissioned by Handel's executor who had been given discretion in the composer's Will to order a monument, although it is possible that Handel and Roubiliac had previously discussed its design. The monument was erected high up in a screen in the south transept of the Abbey, in the company mainly of divines and theologians, and not among the musicians on the other side of the south transept, 'perhaps a sign of Handel's reputation as a religious composer'. (3) David Bindman and Malcolm Baker have commented:

The 1738 statue for Vauxhall shows the composer as a passive and genial recipient of the music of the heavens emanating from Apollo's lyre, and much of the wit of the conception comes from the domestic languor of his attitude. The full-scale wall monument of 1761 (Westminster Abbey) also expresses the idea of heavenly reception through the body and mind as one, but this time Handel is an alert and aspiring figure intently drawing down the music of Messiah from the lyre-playing angel, who can also be read as a projection of his own devout and exultant thoughts ... the head seems to exist on a higher spiritual plane than the meticulously rendered but earth-bound body, as if inspiration has come suddenly, leaving the lower part of the body in a phase of action...

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