College Record 2014

Scientists, I know, regard it as natural to work in a team. This is less often the
case in the humanities. Until recently, in Shropshire, Chester, Gloucestershire and
Oxfordshire, I have worked alone (and largely for love), but in South-East England
I have had the joy for the first time of working with colleagues, one of them a
geologist. Thanks to Kevin Hayward, we have been able to source many different
stones, and to say something about the transport of the raw material from the
Cotswolds, Northamptonshire and the Continent, into a region which had very few
sources of native freestone. Other colleagues are former Oxford pupils, including
Francis Grew, now very senior in the Museum of London and perhaps my first
student in Oxford, and Penny Coombe, almost my last supervisee, whose flair is
apparent in every page of the book.
I began by saying that sculpture once gave this country something of the appearance
of Roman Italy, and in Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, London
and Kent, it includes sarcophagi, representations of gods and goddesses, and
imperial busts. Two of the latter show signs of ancient damage as a result of
political violence: a bust of Pertinax was decapitated and its shoulders were sliced
off when Lullingstone Roman villa (perhaps once his property) was sacked, and a
bust of Caracalla’s ill-fated brother Geta lost its shoulders, and had its ears were
sliced off for good measure before being tossed into the Thames. Geta is now in the
Getty Museum at Malibu, but I was able to see it when I was in Los Angeles for a
conference.
Quite a few marbles brought to England in modern times have been recovered
in excavations, including some collected by the Earl of Arundel in the early
seventeenth century, which were abandoned on the site of Arundel House in
London, and thus never made it to Oxford. They include perhaps his best sculpture,
a frieze of Medusa heads recorded long ago by Rubens in his painting The Constancy
of Scipio. Such discoveries I hope will bring some joy to archaeologists who spend
their time soaking up the sun in Italy, Greece and Turkey. And, in any case, it has
all been and continues to be great fun.
117