John Milton

Maker Michael Rysbrack (Flemish, baptized 1684, died 1770)

Collections

European Sculpture Highlights

ClassificationsSCULPTURE

Dateca. 1737

Mediumterracotta

Dimensionsheight: 22 in. (55.9 cm.)

DescriptionThis bust depicts the English poet and writer John Milton.

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Status

On view

Label TextFor this terracotta, Rysbrack copied the bust on his marble monument to the great 17th-century poet and writer in the so-called Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey—where memorials to Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Charles Dickens are also located. For the portrait, Rysbrack depended on a lifetime engraving of Milton made in 1670 for the frontispiece to his History of Britain.

Object number66.11