Public Images for Private Spaces? The Place of Sculpture in the Georgian Domestic Interior

Abstract

This paper examines the increasing prominence of sculpture within the Georgian interior in terms of the relationship between the (apparently) public nature of sculpture and recent discussions of the Habermasian public sphere. In what way was the ‘publicness’ of sculpture constituted and to what degree is it legitimate to read this mode of representation in terms of its role within the emergent public sphere? How might the incorporation of sculpture within the interior then be understood? The use by neo-Palladian architects of reliefs and busts within the interior registers the complexity of the relationship between public and private. If the public was embedded in the private, this was manifested in material terms through the greater visibility of sculpture within the interior. Just as sculptures such as statues and monuments were being reconfigured so as to take account of new expectations of what constituted the public, so the apparently public art of sculpture could be more easily accommodated within the seemingly private spaces of the domestic interior.

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