A work in progress -
The Coade Stone Plaques of c1794.
Plaques
of Morning, Noon and Evening, signs of the Zodiac and other ornaments (modelled
by J C F Rossi RA 1762 - 1839).
Below the level of the balcony are the signs of the zodiac modelled by sculptor J C F
Rossi (1762-1839).
There are only 11 - the signs for
Scorpio (the scorpion) and Libra (the scales) are combined both on the Farnese
Globe and on the Observatory.
Capricorn.
Sagitarius.
The designs of the reliefs are derived from engravings of the celestial Globe held up by the ancient Farnese figure of Atlas (now in the Museo Nationale, Naples ( National Archaeological Museum),) which has survived from the second century AD and is thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original.
The statue is much restored
Following its restoration probably by Guglielmo della Porta, whose workshop was located right next to the property of Bernardino de’Fabii near the church of Santa Lucia in the late 1550's.
The Atlas was sold to the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1562 for 250 scudi. In an inventory of the Farnese collection from 1642, the statue was valued at 1500 scudi.
It was restored a second time by Carlo Albacini in Rome in April 1790 and was transported to Naples in 1800 as part of the inheritance of the Farnese heir, Charles of Bourbon.18 It was displayed as part of the Royal Bourbonic Museum from 1817 and, with the unification of Italy in 1860 and the collection’s transfer to state ownership,the Atlas became part of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
The Farnese Atlas celestial globe is opened up into two
hemispheres in this engraving of it by Louis-Philippe Boitard (fl. 1733–58).
The hemisphere at left is centred on the autumnal equinox, the one at right on
the vernal equinox. The celestial equator runs horizontally, crossed at the
equinoxes by the band of the zodiac. Grey stippling near the celestial pole at
top left is an area of damage, while the grey area in the southern hemisphere
is the outline of Atlas’s shoulder, partially obscuring Sagittarius and
Capricornus. At the bottom of the left hemisphere is the constellation-free
zone that was below the horizon from the Mediterranean.
For an excellent in depth look at the Iconography of the Farnese Hercules Globe see -
http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/download/thiele-farnese-thurston.pdf
see also - https://www.atlascoelestis.com/Zagrebelsky/Atlante%20Farnese%20Kristen.pdf
https://www.thesaxlproject.com/assets/Uploads/Betozzi-Festschrift-29-May-2017.pdf
.............................
Martin Folkes and his Celestial Globe -
in the Map Collection of the British library, inv. no. G 30
see -
A Chapter in the Nachleben of the Farnese Atlas - Martin Folkes' Globe by Kristen Lippincott
available on line at -
https://www.atlascoelestis.com/Zagrebelsky/Atlante%20Farnese%20Kristen.pdf
I have quoted or adapted liberally here from this excellent piece of scholarship.
Martin Folkes (1690–1754) was Newton's protégé, an English
antiquary, mathematician, numismatist and astronomer who would in the latter
part of his career become simultaneously president of the Royal Society and of
the Society of Antiquaries. Folkes took a Grand Tour from March 1733 to
September 1735, recording the Italian leg of his journey from Padua to Rome in
his journal.
His 97-page illustrated journal is in the Bodleian Library at
the University of Oxford, shelfmark MS Eng. misc.c.444.
In Venice, Folkes demonstrated optical experiments from
Newton’s Opticks (Book I) before an invited audience at the Palazzo Giustinian,
home of senator Giacomo Ascanio Giustiniani, a cultured patron of intellectual
salons. Folkes aimed to recruit supporters for the Royal Society’s Newtonian
agenda.
see - https://voltairefoundation.wordpress.com/2026/03/13/taking-newton-on-tour/
Having left Venice he travelled onwards to Padua, Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Ancona, Loreto, Foligno, Terni and Città Castellino, finally entering rome via the Porto del Popolo on 31 october 1733.
Tantalisingly, on the final verso of the last surviving page of the manuscript, there is the following notation for the date 12 November 1733: Diam. of the Farnesian Globe. 2f. 5 Inch. 1/10 English measure.
Unfortunately the manuscript ends abruptly only two weeks into his year-long stay in rome, although we know that he returned to England via Livorno (Leghorn) after several months in Florence,and that he arrived safely home on 1 September 1735.
The celestial globe is an approximately half-scale copy of the marble globe held by the antiqueFarnese Atlas.
The beautifully detailed figures of the constellations, have been added by hand in dark-grey ink line and wash,suggest that the British library globe was specifically commissioned as a high-quality, three-dimensional, manuscript copy of the antique monument.
A reference to the globe can be found as the final entry into Sir Hans Sloane’s catalogue of ‘Mathematicall instruments’:
57. A copy of the Antique orbis coelestis, made from the original marble in the Farnese Palace at rome at the desire of the late Martin Foulkes Esqr and purchased at his Sale. Presented by Thomas Brand Esqr.
Folkes died in london in June 1754; the Langfords sale of his collections took place in May 1755 and between January and March 1756. Intriguingly there is no mention of the globe in the Folkes printed sale catalogue however - of the annotated copies of the sale catalogue for the collection of prints and drawings, one copy, belonging to the British library, contains a significant handwritten addendum to the proceedings of the Eighth Night’s sale, which took place on
Friday, 23 January 1756. After lot 31,
11 at the bottom of page 17, there are four additional
manuscript entries:
£ sd
A Globe 10s 6d
Chinese manuscript 9s 6d
A portfolio 13s 6d
Cabinet 1s 11d
Having traced the globe back definitively to Martin Folkes, questions begin to arise concerning its earlier provenance.
In the preface to Richard Bentley’s 1739 edition of Manilius’s Astronomica, there is a description of how the copperplate engraving accompanying the volume had been based on an illustration taken from what appears to be Folkes’s globe:
"But just recently the most eminent Martin Foulkes, who is a great expert in the mathematical arts, as in all else, brought with him from rome an ectypum of this Farnese globe made after it with the greatest care; and, in accordance with his singular generosity and the great zeal he has for promoting scholarship, he kindly communicated this to me.
Further, in case the craftsman should perhaps make a mistake in drawing it, he himself [Foulkes] very carefully checked the illustration by reference to the ectypum.
An entry in the British Museum’s‘Donations Book’(or‘Book of Presents’) details that theTrustees of the BM accepted the globe into the collection on 5 May 1758
.......................
M. Manilii Astronomicon.
Richard Bentley FRS (1662 - 1742).
Engraving of the surface of the Farnese globe, the frontispiece to M. Manilii Astronomicon, ed. by Richard Bentley, 1739 - included in this work is an engraved portrait of Bentley by George Vertue.
Roubiliac modelled his posthumous bust of Bentley on this portrait -
Richard Bentley FRS , in low fired clay, lot 81 Third day Roubiliac Sale May 1762 - the marble dated 1756 in the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge.
http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/titleinfo/319461?lang=it
see also
https://www.atlascoelestis.com/Bentley%201739%20pagina.htm
https://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/about/history/radcliffe-observatory/zodiac-signs/
For an excellent overview of the Architecture and scyulpture see -
https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GGJ_2000_10_TYACK.pdf
................................
The 1747 Celestial Map of the Constellations from the ancient statue the Farnese Atlas.
Engraved by Louis Philippe Boitard.
for an useful introduction to the works of Boitard see -
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG20083
Louis Philippe Boitard,- Draughtsman and engraver; son of François Boitard (1667-1719),
born in France; based in London 1709 to 1712 and with whom he probably trained;
during 1740s he worked as a journeyman in the studio of the engraver, William
Henry Toms, alongside the young John Boydell who recorded that he was addicted
to snuff, always indigent and drowned in the New River (Autobiography, p.84).
Attracted notice of Vertue in 1742. Designer and engraver of satirical prints, book illustrations, theatrical portraits, political satires, (including The Covent Garden Frolick and The Present Age BM); also portraits representing 'Remarkable Persons' including Thomas Brown, Elizabeth Canning, Maria Gunning, James Maclean (highwayman) and Hannah Snell ('the female soldier');
In 1753-4 supplied designs, engraved by Robert Hancock to the Battersea enamel factory; his designs also transferred to Worcester porcelain;
He married Englishwoman and had a son and daughter; surviving sketches and
drawings display his observations on the street life of London; his handling of
pen and wash has affinities with Hogarth, combined with rococo of his
countryman Gravelot.
An album containing 65 drawings by Boitard evidently
compiled in the workshop of the print-publisher John Bowles was in the
possession of L. G. Duke in the 1950s, but was subsequently broken up and its
contents dispersed.
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2024/01/boitard.html
...............................
In November 1743, Charles Clay's widow advertised 'a most
magnificent and curious MUSICAL MACHINE, CALL'D The temple of the four Grand
Monarchies of the World (viz. the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian and the
Roman) founded by Ninus, Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great and Augustus
Caesar. The Musick was composed by Geminiani, Handel and Corelli: and properly
adapted to the machine by Mr Geminiani. It performs not only in Concert, but
alternatively on several Instruments, in a most surprising manner, exceeding
the Performance of the best Hands. Note. The Inside Work may be seen by those
who desire it.'
This clock was
finished by John Pyke, clockmaker to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and its
elaborate case included reliefs in silver, based on models by Rysbrack and
bronzes representing the seated figures of the four Grand Monarchies modelled
by the French London-based sculptor Louis Francois Roubiliac (1702-62). The
clock was surmounted by Roubiliac's figures of Hercules and Atlas supporting
the globe .
In December 1743 it was available to view at John Pyke's
premises at the corner of Brownlow Street, facing Bedford Row near Gray's Inn.
It apparently cost more than £4,500
The case was a 'noble Structure, a regular Piece of
Architecture in the Corinthian Order ... made of fine Ebony, with Mouldings of
Brass; its Columns and Entablatures are also of Brass adorn'd with Modilions,
Capitals, Bases and other ornaments of Silver in the most elegant Taste. It is
supported with a Pedestal of circular Form, made of Curious Wood, with Brass
Mouldings, and adorn'd with other Ornaments of Brass, upon which it turns round
at Pleasure for the greater Conveniency of the Spectators'.
This clock was also later acquired for Augusta, widow of
Frederick, Prince of Wales.
The long delay between the completion of the clock and its
acquisition for the Royal Collection explains Clay's frustration with the
challenge of marketing his musical creations.
Three days before his death, he 'order'd a Musical Machine,
which had cost him about 20 Years Time, and upwards of £2000 to bring to
perfection, to be beat to Pieces, and entirely destroy'd to prevent the Expense
of the Time and Money of any one who should attempt to finish it after his
death'.
It seems unlikely that Mrs Clay carried out her husband's
death-bed wishes.
.......................................
The Radcliffe Observatory
https://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/about/history/radcliffe-observatory/radcliffe-observatory-societies/
