89 describes this as 'Hercules and Menalype', a sardonyx intaglio belonging to Lord Barrington.
#Intaglio seal series#
He was employed by James Tassie and several of his gems are listed in the Raspe catalogue (see 862) he also worked for Josiah Wedgwood for whom he made a series of models of horses after designs by George Stubbs.
#Intaglio seal full#
He became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1770 and a full Academician in 1771, a distinction which he celebrated by signing his work thereafter BURCH RA. According to Raspe, the gem was bought by Mr Boyd in Rome for £300.Įdward Burch, who started his life as a water-man on the Thames, became one of the most celebrated of the English gem-engravers of the late eighteenth century.
The prototype of all three must be the so-called antique gem of Hercules supporting the dying Amazon, which belonged to a Mr Boyd in the eighteenth century and was issued a a glass paste by Tassie (see Raspe 1791, no.5775). This is believed to be a copy of the Pichler gem but Burch claimed in his catalogue that the design, though taken from an antique, was altered for his own model. Giovanni Pichler had earlier cut an identical group in intaglio (see Lippold 1922, pl.CXXXIV, no.7), and another version is to be found on an unsigned gem in the Correr Museum in Venice (see Dorigato 1974, pp.34, 63). A cast of an identical group from a sardonyx intaglio cut by Burch for Lord Barrington was included by Burch in his set of casts it is no.89 in his catalogue and is entitled 'Hercules and Menalype'. Curator's comments Text from catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift (Gere et al 1984) no 830:Ī wax model of this subject was exhibited at the Royal Academy by Burch in 1780.
0 kommentar(er)
