ABSTRACT
Instead, dense, solid marble – more specifically, marble sculpture – is conjured up immaterially through memories, words, and reproductive images. In a scholarly context, the apparent interchangeability of marble original, plaster replica, and photographic reproduction is evident well into the twentieth century. This is a formal analysis of a photograph of a statue, rather than of the marble sculpture itself, a practice regularly – though often unselfconsciously – engaged in by art historians ever since the nineteenth century. One could argue that for early practitioners like William Henry Fox Talbot, photographs of white sculpture, whether marble or plaster, served a function that went beyond the technical advantages of being light-colored, immobile objects. The choice of white marble for both the initial statue and the over-life-sized monument on Trafalgar Square was crucial for linking the design visually and conceptually to the Classical tradition of European statuary.
