The Temple of Castor and Pollux (previously Temple of Jupiter Stator) in the Roman Forum - finally built in AD 6 - consisted of eight Corinthian columns at each end with 11 on either flank of which only three columns now survive. Sear (1982.p.67) wrote 'the capitals of the Temple of Castor are worth studying because they represent some of the finest Augustan carving....The lower half of the bell is decorated with rows of acanthus leaves alternately high and low. The over-lapping lobes of the leaves from pear-shaped cavities....From the leaves spring the cauliculi to support the volutes which run up to the corners of the abacus. From the same cauliculi spring the helics which join together under the middle of the abacus to support a flower....The abacus is decorated.'

Dance wrote to his father (4 October 1760): 'I am measuring the / Antiquities...The three famous Columns of the Temple of Jupiter in the Campo Vaccino being / in a very ruinous condition. The Campidoglis have employ'd Workmen to / repair & preserve them, to perform which they have rais'd a Scaffold quite / up to the Architrave. I have not let slip this opportunity of measuring / them, & have sav'd up money to get them modell'd, which I shall have done / as well as possible by a very clever Sculptor who will do it for me as cheap / as it can be done; All I wait for is the License which Seigⁿ Gensimone has / promised to procure me. I shall have it made in sevl pieces which I can / afterwards get join'd by the Caxters in England, which will make the Portage / come to a small Expence, & I believe you won't be displeas'd to see a Model / cast from the finest Example of the Corinthian Order perhaps in the whole / World. The Sculpture of the Ornaments is most exquisite & I believe can / be no other than the Work of some Grecian Artist.' A month later on 2 November Dance wrote to his father again: 'The Model of the Entablature of the three Columns in the / Campo Vaccino I mentioned in my last is almost finish'd, & I am / very happy to have in my hands so exact a copy of the most beauti- / full Order in the World, which will no doubt be a treasure to me / in England. It was never Modell'd before...[it] will be of the greatest use to me in my study & reputation' (RIBA MSS Collection, DaFam/1/2.

Soane, in his Royal Academy Lecture II, spoke of the Temple of Castor and Pollus (naming it as the Temple to Jupiter Stator) as 'the most sublime and awefully grand and impressive, whether we consider the excellence of the execution, the largeness of the general parts, the uncommon taste and elegance in the various enrichments, of the great breadth of light and shadow of this noble composition. The transition from one beauty to another is so great that we forget the impropriety of modillions and dentils being found in the same cornice.... The capital ... is full of originality and peculiar grace; the effect of caulicolil, entwined in each other, is uncommonly beautiful , and highly rational, whilst the playfulness of the ornaments rising between them and the volutes which support the abacus cannot be sufficiently admired' (quoted in Watkin, in 1996, p.511).

Of the 18 casts from the Temple of Castor and Pollux/Jupiter Stator acquired by Soane none have a Dance provenance.

LITERATURE. F. Sear, Roman architecture, 1982; D Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment thought and the Royal Academy lectures, Cambridge 1996; J. Ingamells (ed). A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800, 1997 (entry for George Dance by F. Salmon).

Group

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