The Flemish sculptor John Michael Rysbrack achieved great success after moving from Antwerp to London in 1720. He became the leading sculptor of busts and monumental tombs until he experienced competition from Louis François Roubiliac in the 1740s. Rysbrack was also renowned as a skillful modeler, and his terracotta models were highly sought after by eighteenth-century connoisseurs.
In this portrait by the Florentine artist Andrea Soldi, Rysbrack is shown at work on the terracotta modello for his marble statue of Hercules. The marble, which Horace Walpole considered his “chef d’oeuvre,” was commissioned by Henry Hoare of Stourhead in Wiltshire and was completed in 1756. A terracotta bust by Rysbrack that relates to the statue of Hercules is shown alongside. The terracotta model represented in the painting was bequeathed to Hoare by Rysbrack in 1770, and it remains at Stourhead to this day.
Text: Yale Center for British Art.
