Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/315

This page needs to be proofread.

Seventeenth Century. 285 named Hubert le Sceur, a pupil of Giovanni da Bologna. The effigy of Cecil Lord Burghiey, on his tomb at Stamford, may be taken as a good specimen of the monu- mental sculpture of the Elizabethan period — stiff and quaint to a degree, but often, as in this instance, showing great mastery in portraiture. We now come to the men who laid the foundations of our present school of sculpture. The earliest was Grinling Gibbons (1648 — 1721), a sculptor of considerable merit of the reign of Charles II., who especially excelled in wood- carving. Fine specimens of his work are preserved in Windsor Castle, at Burleigh, Chatsworth, Petworth, and other residences of the nobility, and in the Choir, Library, and other parts of St. Paul's Cathedral. Cajus Gabriel Cibber (1630—1700), a Dane, was the author of the bas-reliefs on the Monument near London Bridge, and two fine allegorical figures of Frenzy and Melancholy designed for the entrance-hall of the Beth- lehem Hospital for Lunatics, which are truly terrible embodiments of a poetical conception of fearful madness. Few works of any importance were produced in England during the reigns of James II., William and Mary, Anne, and George I. John Bushnell executed the statues at Temple Bar, now removed, and Francis Bird the monuments of Dr. Busby and others in Westminster Abbey, and the figures in the pediment of St. Paul's; but they are none of them worthy of special notice. In the reign of George II., however, great activity was displayed by three foreigners who had settled in London : Roubiliac, a Frenchman, and Scheemakers and Ruysbrack, natives of Holland. Roubiliac (1695 — 1762) was by far the greatest artist