Bath, Art and Architecture: 5. The Brasenose College Oxford Cain and Abel.

Monday, 3 March 2025

5. The Brasenose College Oxford Cain and Abel.

Part 5. The Colossal Lead Group of Samson slaying the Philistine aka Cain and Abel.

Formerly at Brasenose College (disappeared),

John van Nost II.

Supplied by van Nost II as Kain and Abel

Dr Clarke was Billed for Kain and Abel 23 August 1728. £30 0s 0d

Previously known as Cain and Abel.

See - https://www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/downloads/Brazen_Nose_2021-2022_Vol.56_Web_Version_Scanned_Cover_Added.pdf

by David Bradbury (Ancient & Modern History, 1981). Page 88.

Cain and Abel - a Misnamed Statue Archetypes journey from Spain top the Old Quad.

The College's version was purchased in London and brought to Oxford by barge. It was finally removed in 1881. It had proved a great temptation to the students and had been painted or otherwise adorned on many occasions.

David Loggan's engraving of 1674 shows hedges and trees in the style of a knot garden, surrounded by a low ornamental wall. In October 1727 all this was removed, and Thomas Hearne (1678-1735) recorded the fact with great indignation. He said that the garden was 'the only one of that kind then remaining in Oxford' and that it 'was a delightful & pleasant Shade in Summer Time. This is done purely to turn it into a Grass Plot, & to erect some silly Statue there'.

“On 9th March 1881, the ‘bump supper’ celebration of a Brasenose success on the river turned ugly. ‘In the flickering light of bonfires,’ recalled L.R. Farnell, the scholar of Greek religion, ‘could be seen the figures of some two hundred young men bounding and leaping high . . . and passing from lurid light into deep shadow alternately; and the leaping was accompanied by terrifying yells and the most fantastic music ever devised by savages standing on the verge of culture.’ Finally, the undergraduates turned their attentions to a statue that had stood in the middle of Old Quad lawn for 150 years, and defaced it with indelible paint. It and its obscene graffiti were quietly despatched to a scrapyard soon after.

Lex Talionis.

Samson, who slew his Philistines by scores,

No longer guards the Brazen House’s doors:

Blind and disarmed, his office he resigns,

And meekly falls among the Philistines.