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Books

Marble-mania: when England became a spiritual heir to the ancients

A review of Owning the Past: Why the English Collected Antique Sculpture, 1640 - 1840, by Ruth Guilding. Treats include an illustration of a pair of cleaning ladies in the hall at Castle Howard

8 November 2014

9:00 AM

8 November 2014

9:00 AM

Owning the Past: Why the English Collected Antique Sculpture, 1640–1840 Ruth Guilding

Yale, pp.412, £55, ISBN: 9780300208191

Phrases such as ‘Some aspects of…’ are death at the box-office, so it is not exactly unknown for the titles of scholarly works to promise far more than they actually deliver. Most unusually, the actual reach of Ruth Guilding’s mighty and compelling new study is far wider than the already large subject of ‘Why the English Collected Antique Sculpture, 1640–1840’.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £48 Tel: 08430 600033. David Ekserdjian curated the 2012 Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy and is an expert on the Italian Renaissance.

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