‘Pretensions to permanency’: Lord Byron’s portrait busts

Keats-Shelley House
Piazza di Spagna, 26, 00187 Roma

Keats-Shelley House and V21 Artspace Present a Unique 3D Virtual Exhibition
‘Pretensions to permanency’: Lord Byron’s portrait busts

“Lord Byron (1788-1824) was one of the first British celebrities, a status fueled by his poetry and lifestyle, but also his image. Fascination with Byron's portraiture was in part cultivated by his literary publisher, John Murray, who as early as 1812 sought to include Byron's face in the frontispiece to his hugely successful poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. From this point onwards, Byron and his image were inseparable.” - The Keats-Shelley House

In recognition of the bicentenary of the death of Lord Byron, The Keats-Shelley House commissioned V21 Artspace to produce a digital, online 3D Virtual Exhibition, bringing together 5 busts of Lord Byron by renowned sculptors: Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850), Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) and Ottaviano Giovannozzi (1767-1853).

The process took Joe Clark and Claire Cutts (V21 Artspace co-founders) to various institutions and museums including John Murray (publishing house) at 50 Albemarle Street (London), The National Portrait Gallery stores (London), Gallerie dell'Accademia (Florence) and The Keats-Shelley House (Rome) to photographically capture data for each bust using 3D scanning technologies to produce digital renditions.

The digital renditions are displayed on plinths in an online gallery, inspired and designed in CGI from referential photographs and videos recorded by V21 Artspace during their visit to Rome and Florence earlier in the year. With influence taken from the neoclassical era, reminiscent of the sculptors’ working spaces, characterised by clean lines and symmetry. The open space and large window and doorway are also typical, allowing for ample natural light that would have been favoured during the Romantic period as part of its emphasis on natural beauty and harmony. 

Within the online gallery visitors are able to move around the busts and are invited to take a closer look using a custom developed interactive 3D object viewer with detailed descriptions and a tool to enable comparison of one bust with another, such as a comparison of Thorvaldsen’s bust with Bartolini’s marble bust: “Thorvaldsen's bust of Lord Byron depicted the poet in a neoclassical tradition, emphasising an idealised form of beauty associated with Emperors of the Classical World. Thorvaldsen's depiction shows Byron with a square jawline and shorter curls. In contrast, Bartolini's depiction of Byron emphasised the poet's realism and also opted for longer curls and sideburns, or whiskers. You can see how the angle of the poet's chin differs, as does the shape of his neck, and his brow line.”

‘Pretensions to permanency’: Lord Byron’s portrait busts: a 3D Virtual Exhibition will be on display for visitors to The Keats-Shelley House. Accompanying the digital exhibition, is a 3D printed version of the ‘Lord Byron by Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850) 1822, terra cruda (unfired clay), Pizza’, providing an opportunity for a visitor to engage with a touchable rendition, touching being a restriction with the original bust.


Find out more: ksh.roma.it

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