3-100-838 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Cast of a bust of Sir Christopher Wren, 1673. Edward Pierce sculpted his marble portrait bust of English architect Sir Christopher Wren, of which this is a plaster cast, in 1672. Pierce's sculpture, which shows a mastery of the Baroque idiom of Bernini and Coysevox, was unprecedented in English sculpture of this date. The sculptor's assimilation of the style (evident above all in the flowing drapery) is all the more remarkable given that he is not believed to have travelled abroad. For this reason Margaret Whinney suggests that Wren (who had seen Bernini's bust of Louis XIV in France in 1665) may have had some say in its design. Regardless, the result was the most memorable of all likenesses of the great architect. This cast is one of eight busts of artists and architects installed in the 'Octagon' in the Main Galleries at Burlington House when the Royal Academy of Arts moved there in 1868.