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Medallion
Wedgwood - Enlarge image
Medallion
- Place of origin:
Etruria, England (made)
- Date:
1772-1780 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Wedgwood (maker)
- Materials and Techniques:
Black Basalt, with integral gilt frame
- Museum number:
4-1884
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 118e, case 3
Object Type
The relief was probably intended for incorporation into a chimney-piece. Wedgwood said such reliefs were used 'in the composition of a great variety of chimneypieces', and he claimed that they could 'be seen in the houses of many of the first nobility and gentry in the kingdom.'
Place
The first Bacchus and a Panther medallion was made in 1772 for Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, a major promoter of Neo-classicism in Britain, whose London house was built by the architect Robert Adam.
Subject Depicted
The design is adapted from a sculpture on the frieze of the 4th-century BC Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. Detailed engravings of it were included in the first volume of The Antiquities of Athens.
People
The architect James Stuart, who first published this design, built little but his books were influential. Wedgwood was on good terms with Stuart and issued two portrait medallions of him. Stuart, meanwhile, advised Wedgwood on matters of design, proposed his election as Fellow to the Royal Society, and incorporated his Jasper tablets in one of his interiors. He also composed an epitaph for the memorial to Wedgwood's partner, Thomas Bentley, who died in 1780.
