Norwich, Norfolk, UK
Church of St Giles,
Monument to William Offley †1767. Marble, perhaps commissioned by his wife Maria †1776.
The third, and most surprising, of the monuments on the north wall of the aisle. The oval inscription, offset to the left, is framed by a broken pediment on one side, balanced by a pile of books under a pilgrim’s lamp on the other, and propped on an asymmetrical scrolled coat of arms. Above a curtain, tied in a knot, hangs from a single broken curved pediment, supporting the spirally striped urn. The deliberate and well thought out asymmetry is continued in the decorative capital, balanced by the angel, whose wings on the right were shaped to fit the monument, and in the apron where an open book rests on palm and olive branches. The ingenious asymmetry is a simplified sculptural version, without much of the ornament, of the 1761 title page of Thomas Johnson’s One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707-1837, New Haven and London, 2012 ed., p.97). Dame Anne Astley of Melton Constable knew the monument, either in St Giles or in the workshop of the unknown artist, ordering a simplified variant for the memorial to her eight year old daughter, Anna Maria †1768, in family chapel at St Peter, Melton Constable.
The little that is known of William Offley (born 1702) comes from the inscription, recording that he was a doctor, had studied the Classics (Literai Humaniores) from his youth and had been a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. The name of his wife Maria (born 1700) was added to the bottom of the inscription on her death ten years later in 1776.
Norwich, Norfolk, UK
Church of St Giles,
Monument to William Offley †1767. Marble, perhaps commissioned by his wife Maria †1776.
The third, and most surprising, of the monuments on the north wall of the aisle. The oval inscription, offset to the left, is framed by a broken pediment on one side, balanced by a pile of books under a pilgrim’s lamp on the other, and propped on an asymmetrical scrolled coat of arms. Above a curtain, tied in a knot, hangs from a single broken curved pediment, supporting the spirally striped urn. The deliberate and well thought out asymmetry is continued in the decorative capital, balanced by the angel, whose wings on the right were shaped to fit the monument, and in the apron where an open book rests on palm and olive branches. The ingenious asymmetry is a simplified sculptural version, without much of the ornament, of the 1761 title page of Thomas Johnson’s One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707-1837, New Haven and London, 2012 ed., p.97). Dame Anne Astley of Melton Constable knew the monument, either in St Giles or in the workshop of the unknown artist, ordering a simplified variant for the memorial to her eight year old daughter, Anna Maria †1768, in family chapel at St Peter, Melton Constable.
The little that is known of William Offley (born 1702) comes from the inscription, recording that he was a doctor, had studied the Classics (Literai Humaniores) from his youth and had been a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. The name of his wife Maria (born 1700) was added to the bottom of the inscription on her death ten years later in 1776.