ORLANDO GIBBONS: THE PORTRAITS

No contemporary portrait of Orlando Gibbons (I583-I 625) is known to exist; the most artistic and reliable likeness is that of the monumental bust commissioned by the composer's widow and erected in Canterbury Cathedral in i6261 (Plates I & II). Other representations are the engravings given by John Dart,2 after the bust, and Sir John Hawkins3 (Plate III), probably derived in turn from Dart, and the painting in the Faculty of Music at Oxford (Plate IV), the main subject of this article. The twenty-inch high white marble portrait bust, which forms the focal point of Gibbons's monument in the north aisle of Canterbury Cathedral, is by far the superior work of art. It is an example of the fashion, between about i620 and I640, for busts or demifigures derived from the antique to commemorate the dead, and is the work of Nicholas Stone (I583-I647),4 a prolific sculptor who produced a great range of commemorative sculpture, most of it imaginative in design and of distinguished quality; the relevant entry in Stone's Notebook states: 'In i626 I set up a monument at Canterbury for Orlando Gibbons, the King's organist, for the which his wife paid ?32'.5 As befitting Gibbons's status, his monument was modest in comparison with that of, say, Thomas, Lord Knivett6 at Stanwell in Middlesex, for which in I623 Stone had charged 2 I5. E. H. Fellowes noted that the bust had been roughly handled, and the nose broken, but this has since been restored. To