Francis Harwood, Bust of a Man, ca. 1758, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Without close precedent or parallel, Bust of a Man defies categorization, occupying a singular place within the history of Black representation in eighteenth-century art. It was made around 1758 in the studio of a British-born sculptor, Francis Harwood (1726/7–1783), about whom very little is known. Although he was a British subject, he spent his entire career working in Florence. There, Harwood had access to high-quality materials, a skilled workforce, and a steady supply of patrons. His studio made busts, funerary monuments, chimneypieces, and other forms of architectural sculpture bought as souvenirs by a predominately British clientele participating in the “Grand Tour.” These young men and women traveled to see not only the art and architecture of Renaissance and baroque Italy but also the architectural and sculptural vestiges of ancient Rome, which were then being rediscovered and restored. While the main products of Harwood’s studio were replicas of famous busts from antiquity, he occasionally produced works of his own invention, such as the bust of the seventeenth-century Lord Protector of Britain, Oliver Cromwell. Bust of a Man seems to fall into this small group of works without a classical precedent.
Major gaps exist in our knowledge about the circumstances in which this sculpture was created. Firstly, it is not clear who served as its model. On the one hand, its form—especially the silhouette of the torso—follows classical tropes; on the other, the specific detail of the scar on the sitter’s forehead suggests that the sculpture was observed from life. Black people had lived in Italy for hundreds of years, and in the eighteenth century, leading families in Florence such as the Medici had attendants of African heritage in their households, often drawing from the enslaved populations of the nearby port of Livorno. Their presence in Italy is evinced in art and sculpture made for both the private and public spheres, from carved and gilt torchères to larger-than-life figures incorporated into public monuments. These figures were often shown enslaved and partially clothed, and were sometimes modeled from life. For example, there is evidence that the Renaissance sculptor Pietro Tacca (1577–1640) travelled to the bagno (slave complex) at Livorno to find models for the Quattro Mori, part of his monument to Ferdinando I, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Made between 1599 and 1626, this celebrated sculpture was certainly known to Harwood, who had been commissioned by the Duke of Tuscany in Florence to work on a public sculpture in 1758. In fact, Harwood may have had the figure of Morgiano, the enslaved Algerian in Tacca’s statue, in mind when working on Bust of a Man.
Harwood’s sculpture belongs to this racialized mode of representation but also departs from it, showing the figure as autonomous and self-possessed, his head held high. Bust of a Man can be seen as part of a broader shift in portraiture during the 1750s toward depicting Black sitters with greater dignity and, for the first time, as the sole subject of an artwork. This development reflected the growing prominence of British society figures born beyond Britain’s shores, such as the writer and composer Ignatius Sancho (ca. 1729–1780), Mai (ca. 1753–1779), and Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761–1804), and can be linked to the fledging abolitionist movement that began to coalesce in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
There are two known versions of Bust of a Man: one at the YCBA, and another at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The latter is signed by Harwood and inscribed with the date 1758. Until the Getty bust appeared on the art market in 1987, the authorship of the YCBA version was unknown. Both busts are on yellow marble socles (architectural bases), which provide a striking contrast with the dark color of the figures. Whereas the version at the Getty derives its color and surface finish from multiple applications of a dark coating over a light tan stone, giving it a warmer, matte appearance, the YCBA version is carved from a black limestone, or pietra da paragone. The YCBA bust was thought to have belonged to the Esterházys, an aristocratic Austro-Hungarian family who amassed a large and significant collection of art in Vienna. Nikolaus II, Prince Esterházy (1765–1833), was a Grand Tourist and remained a keen patron of sculpture, commissioning works from Antonio Canova (1757–1822), Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), and other Italian artists working in the neoclassical style.
What is known for certain is that the YCBA bust was sold at auction in southern Germany in 1961, when it was acquired by a commercial gallery in New York that in turn sold it in 1967 to the YCBA’s benefactor Paul Mellon (1907–1999). At that time, the work was misattributed to Alessandro Vittoria (1525–1608), a Renaissance artist who worked in Venice. After Mellon’s death, the sculpture was given to the YCBA, where it has since remained on view as part of the permanent collection.
Today, it is possible only to speculate as to why Harwood’s patrons commissioned Bust of a Man. While the countenance of the sitter is undeniably dignified and self-possessed, it may have served to normalize Britain’s exploitation of Africans for its eighteenth-century audiences. By alluding to the world of antiquity, it linked Britain’s imperial project to the Roman Empire, of which northern Africa was an integral part. But until more is learned through careful archival research, this object will continue to confound categorization and remain defiantly ambiguous.
—Edward Town, Assistant Curator, Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art
Select Bibliography
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