Philip Rundell ( 1746 - 1827)
The King of Hanover's Shield Of Achilles, London 1823 by Philip Rundell for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell. (Please click image for more information)
Diameter: 89.7 cm (35 ¾ inches)
Weight (approximately): 22,490 g (723 oz)
Cast and chased after John Flaxman’s design, modelled with scenes from the 18th book of the Iliad, the reverse with four rings at the rim and centre for attaching enarmes, also engraved with the cipher and arms of Ernest Augustus King of Hanover and inscribed THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES / DESIGNED AND MODELLED BY THE LATE / JOHN FLAXMAN R.A. / EXECUTED AND PUBLISHED BY RUNDELL BRIDGE AND CO. / LONDON 1838
Conceived as a recreation of the shield forged for Achilles, described in the 18th book of Homer’s Iliad, it represents a revival of the tradition of sculptural shields with narrative decoration that had been popular during the Renaissance period. Rundell’s were also at the forefront of the growing trade in antique silver, and the presence on the London market around this time of works such as the early seventeenth century Genoese Lomellini ewers and basins and the sixteenth century Milanese Aldobrandini tazze no doubt provided ample inspiration for this new creation. As early as 1810 the partners, the irascible but shrewd Phillip Rundell and the urbane master salesman John Bridge, had decided to produce a shield that would equate Britain’s military prowess with that of the ancient Greeks. It was Rundell’s finest achievement.
The neo-classical sculptor John Flaxman was commissioned to provide the design. He had been designing plate for the royal goldsmiths for some years already but this was by far the most ambitious undertaking for him and for the firm. In March 1810 Flaxman’s wife recorded that, ‘our evenings are spent in making designs for the Shield of Achilles’. By October of that year the sculptor had submitted his first designs. Flaxman used the original Greek text of the Iliad, painstakingly devising groups of figures, which were arranged around a central three-dimensional depiction of Apollo in his chariot of the sun. In a somewhat salacious and gossipy biography of Philip Rundell published in 1827, the anonymous author recorded:
At the period in question, Mr. Flaxman was in the habit of attending regularly every evening, bearing under his arm an edition of Homer’s Iliad, nearly as tall as himself, when he would read aloud to Mr [Philipp] Rundell and his partners long extracts, adding his comments, and entering into disquisitions, that, if not unintelligible, were at all events tedious to his auditors. Mr. Rundell, who never professed himself a scholar, though a competent judge of refined workmanship, was under the necessity of relinquishing to his nephew, Mr [Edmond Waller] Rundell, who had pursued classical studies, Mr [Thomas] Bigge, furnished with a college education, and Mr [John] Bridge, conversant with the best authors, the earlier stages of the production under review, which was finally accomplished at the private manufactory of th street, Soho. (Memoirs of the late Philip Rundell Esq., London 1827.)
Work dragged on for several years, no doubt much to the chagrin of Philip Rundell. At the outset Flaxman had received one hundred guineas for ‘4 models and 6 drawings’. When the news reached then in 1814 that their rivals in nearby Ludgate Street, the firm of Green, Ward & Green, had been given a commission by the bankers and merchants of London to produce their own triumphal shield to honour the Duke of Wellington, no doubt Rundell’s pressured Flaxman to complete his work. Shortly afterwards, Flaxman’s wife commented that ‘he has at the Desire of Messrs Rundell recommenc’d the Model of the famous Shield upon a larger Plan’. No doubt Rundell’s made sure that their shield would be the bigger. Even so, it was not until 1817 that another payment was made to Flaxman, “on account” of £200, with a final one of £525 paid on the completion the following year. (Culme, p.78)
William Theed, Rundell’s chief artistic advisor and modeller, had died in 1817. As a result, Flaxman determined to model the shield himself, which he did in carved plaster. The first casts, in bronze, were made in Rundell’s Dean Street workshop, formerly run by Paul Storr but at that time by Cato Sharp, and were finished by the firm’s chaser, William Pitts. The first silver version was cast in the summer of 1819. In September of that year Flaxman remarked, ‘I have seen the cast in silver for the shield which is indeed very successful & perfect so that little finishing seems needful to the faces of Minerva or Mars or to the other more delicate parts of the Basso relievo & consequently the less the Chaser has to do the more the metal will resemble the Model’ (letters from John Flaxman to Thomas Bigge cited by Bury and Snodin p. 282)
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E. Alfred Jones, The Gold and Silver of Windsor Castle, Arden Press Letchworth, 1911 page XLVIII
Exhibition Catalogue: John Flaxman, R.A., 26 October – 9 December 1979, pp 30-31
Exhibition Catalogue: ROYAL GOLDSMITHS The Art of Rundell & Bridge 1797 – 1843, Koopman Rare Art, 14 June – 1 July 2005, text Christopher Hartop and contributors, notes 34 and 35 to pages 99-118
Associated Literature:
Shirley Bury and Michael Snodin, ‘The Shield of Achilles by John Flaxman R.A.’ in Sotheby’s Art at Auction, 1983-4, London 1984, pp 274-283
John Culme’s cataloguing note, Important Gold and Silver, Sotheby’s London, 3 May 1984, lot 124
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