Re-membering the Anglo-Saxons in the Eighteenth Century: Sculpture, Stowe and Questions of Identity

The early medieval/early Christian sculptures of Scotland, with the contemporary interest in questions of Scottish (‘national’) identity, came to be viewed increasingly in terms of ‘ancient’ Scottish history.

In England, where traditionally the Britons and Romans had formed the loci of such attention, this phenomenon was less pronounced. Only at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, in a startling display of Whig nationalist concerns, were the Anglo-Saxons invoked – as a series of seven statues of Anglo-Saxon deities by the sculptor Rysbrack. The unique nature of these monuments (in both their form and identity) means they have been little discussed in art historical scholarship, but they nevertheless provide a compelling insight into emerging attitudes towards the Anglo-Saxons in terms of the monumental and the sculptural.