Page - 199 - in Der Arkadenhof der Universität Wien und die Tradition der Gelehrtenmemoria in Europa

of perception, and involved what Michael Bax- andall called a ‘Lockean mode of viewing’.7 At the same time, through Enlightenment writ- ings about the nature of personal identity – not least those of Locke and Hume – the bust could be approached in a different way as the image of an individual, a distinctive personality. With their subtly finished surfaces, the finest busts – such as Roubiliac’s Alexander Pope – invite close viewing by informed eyes (Fig. 1).8 But with- in eighteenth-century culture, such aesthetica- tion was balanced by commodification and the same busts were widely reproduced in plaster and other materials as multiples. The bust could stand alone as a distinctive image representing and celebrating someone whose achievements were distinctive and singular. On the other hand, in most cases such images did not stand alone. Pope’s bust, for example, was very often paired with another celebrated ‘worthy’, such as New- ton, forming part of a sequence which served as a visual representation of a literary canon. The bust as a genre also worked through rep- etition and the use of shared format and con- ventions. The use of the same format signalled belonging to a group. Of course, most portraits involve a play between the duality of likeness and type, an oscillation between individual and group identity. But the relatively restricted range of conventions used for the bust makes this even more pertinent to an understanding of how this genre works as a mode of representation. The shared use of the same conventional format is foregrounded when busts are assembled as a ser- ies, in which individual likenesses are balanced by what they share. In the case of busts of writers or scholars dis- played together within an institutional context, this duality takes on particular significance. The point of setting up a bust of a writer or scholar is to celebrate that person’s distinctive achievement – what sets him or her (though it is usually him) apart. What is emphasised here is indeed distinc- tion. At the same time, the placing of a bust of a writer or scholar alongside others using a simi- lar format registers belonging, either to a literary canon or an academic institution. What were the various groups to which the subjects represented belonged? Were they being celebrated as writ- ers, as philosophers, or simply as having associa- tions with those institutions where they were set? There were often other tensions in play too. As well as becoming an image which was ac- corded close and sustained attention, the por- trait bust in the eighteenth century frequent- Fig. 1: Louis-François Roubiliac, Alexander Pope, 1740, marble. Private collection. A very puissAnt spurre 199 7 M. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, New Haven / London 1985, pp. 76–79; for the ‘Lockean viewing’ of sculp- ture, see Baker, The Marble Index (cit. n. 6), pp. 56–65. 8 Baker, The Marble Index (cit. n. 6), pp. 261–276; M. Baker, Busts and Friendship: The Identity and Context of William Murray’s Version of Roubiliac’s Bust of Pope, in: Sculpture Journal, XXII, 2013, pp. 65–76; M. Baker, Fame and Friendship. Pope, Roubiliac and the Portrait Bust, Waddesdon 2014, pp. 74–95.