Charles Townley nella sua galleria di sculture

Charles Townley sits in a red armchair among his Greek and Roman marbles, a book open on his knee, a few friends deep in talk around him. He was one of the great British collectors of ancient sculpture, most of it bought in Rome in the 1760s and 1770s through dealers while on the Grand Tour. But the room Zoffany shows never existed like this. The statues were actually scattered through Townley's London house, and the painter gathered his favourites into one impossible gallery to get them all onto a single canvas. The marble head on the table in the centre is the one Townley loved most, a woman emerging from a flower he called his Clytie. In the foreground stands a Roman copy of a famous ancient discus thrower. Zoffany gives the cold marble figures as much presence as the living men around them.