Ceres and Grammar

Allegory in Art

The use of the female figure to depict allegory – whether as goddess, vice, virtue, or nation, for example – has a long history in the visual arts and is found across sculpture, painting, illustration and architectural decoration.

In 1977, outgoing RCPI President Byran Alton (1919–1991) presented us with two allegorical plasterwork panels, a third being presented by the Faculty of Occupational Medicine.

In addition to his medical work, Alton was a noted supporter and patron of the arts (serving as Master Warden of the Company of Goldsmiths and as a Governor and Guardian of the National Gallery of Ireland). He had particular interest in porcelain and other objets d’art.

Ceres

Architectural Historian Constantine P. Curran identified the panel now in the Corrigan Hall as probably showing Ceres. The draped figure is shown sitting on a globe divided into four quadrants and decorated with stars. She holds a trifid of wheat and a cornucopia filled with corn and fruit. Associated with agriculture, grain, fertility and mothering, the figure of Ceres may also be used to represent summer.

Grammar

The second panel, on the main stairs, depicts an allegory of ‘Grammar’, one of the seven Liberal Arts or disciplines connected to learning that include grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.

Similar to the figure of Ceres, the female figure is shown in drapery reminiscent of classical sculpture. She holds an urn, pouring its contents over fronds in a jar; symbolising Grammar ‘watering’ and encouraging young minds. This panel is particularly apt for its location, given the RCPI role in learning and education.

The Artist

Both plasterwork panels are copies of original stuccowork in Riverstown House, Cork. The house was enlarged and redecorated in the first half of the eighteenth century by Bishop Jemmett Browne (c.1703–1782), its fine interior reflects Browne’s connection to eighteenth-century intellectual figures like Samuel Madden who sought to improve Irish domestic architecture.

Riverstown’s crowning glory is the presence of decorative plasterwork by the noted Swiss-Italian stuccoists, Paolo Lafranchini (1695–1776) and his brother, Filipo (1702–c.1779).

Browne commissioned the brothers to create a decorative ceiling and ten plasterwork panels for the dining room as well as an additional panel for an adjoining room. The scheme was completed around 1745.

Curran suggested that the designs for the panels were drawn from Roman coinage, but more recently it has been suggested that they were more likely drawn from the architectural and sculptural engravings of Domenico de' Rossi (1659–1730). Domenico de' Rossi’s published volumes were an important source for the Lafranchini brothers.

In the 1960s, the Irish Georgian Society campaigned for the restoration of Riverstown, concerned for the fate of this important example of the Lafranchini’s work in Ireland. Raymond McGrath oversaw the taking of moulds from the originals and a suite of facsimiles were made for Áras an Uachtaráin.

Although speculative, it seems likely that the College’s panels were made from the same moulds. The decorative festoon and face seen over the Ceres panel is also a direct facsimile of that found in Riverstown.