Portrait busts of Thomas Hope’s wife and sons by Bertel Thorvaldsen, and Hope’s commissions to Lorenzo Bartolini

Several published and manuscript sources raise doubts about the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the literature on portrait busts made in Rome by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), the Danish neoclassical sculptor, for one of his most important patrons. The patron was Thomas Hope (1769–1831), celebrated arbiter of British taste in architecture, furniture design and interior decoration. This article considers afresh Thorvaldsen’s busts of Hope family members. It also confirms an earlier proposed identification of the sitter (not a member of Hope’s family) for a model bust in Thorvaldsen’s Museum, while establishing that a marble version of that bust entered the Hope family collection, probably through ties of friendship. Hope’s collection included a marble bust of his eldest son by the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini (1770–1850), modelled in Florence shortly before the Hope family arrived in Rome, where Thorvaldsen modelled portraits of some of its members. Bartolini’s bust of Hope’s eldest son may be linked to another, important, work by Bartolini that Hope commissioned. Hitherto that work has not been illustrated, or linked to Hope, in commentaries on Bartolini. The opportunity is also taken to address a longstanding claim that Bartolini carved for Thomas Hope a marble copy of Antonio Canova’s Hope Venus.