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THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 



finished in its entirety: he died in 1874 regretting 

 'that he had not been able to show his beloved work 

 completed to the Queen'. 55 



The panel of David (Fig. 7) incorporates a choir 

 of angels resting on clouds, the figures holding 

 banners and draped in a manner reminiscent of the 

 Teffont Evias panel. However, the composition of 

 pairs of angels alternating with angels holding 

 instruments is more complex than in the earlier 

 work and creates a rhythm which is echoed in the 

 arches of the temple on the right of the panel. The 

 Albert Memorial Chapel panels continue the style 

 of the Marmor Homericum with their richness of 

 draperies, detail of objects and architectural settings, 

 and also with the variety of colours employed: 

 twenty eight different marbles from Great Britain, 

 France, Italy, Greece and Belgium were used for 

 the pictures, together with a range of coloured 

 cements. 56 



The tarsia panels in the Albert Memorial Chapel 

 were executed byTriqueti's former pupil, Jules C. 

 Destreez (b.1831) who, it was stated in The Art 

 Journal, with the aid of an entirely new process of 

 his own invention, had been able to reproduce every 

 detail ofTriqueti's drawings and had also improved 

 the cement so that it was as durable as the marble 

 itself. The writer in The Art Journal went on to 

 suggest that the importance of Destreez's technical 

 contribution was evident when this, and the 

 Marmor Homericum, were compared with the 

 earlier Visitation (which, as we have seen, has lost 

 some of its cement), and stated thatTriqueti would 

 have acknowledged his former pupil's work by 

 including his name with his own on the tarsia panels 

 had he lived. ,7 



Triqueti (and Destreez) executed one final 

 example of marble tarsia in 1870: the Yates 

 Memorial presented to University College Hospital 

 by Charles J. Hare in memory of the benefactor, 

 Edward Yates. Like the Marmor Homericum and 

 the panels in the Albert Memorial Chapel, the Yates 

 memorial combines the tarsia technique with 

 Florentine mosaic, but some of the hard stones in 

 the side panels of the later work are left raised. 

 Moreover, the memorial incorporates two free- 

 standing statuettes on the lower section. 5S Even at 

 this late stage in his career, Henri de Triqueti was 

 willing to experiment further with a process on 

 which he had worked intermittently for nearly thirty 

 years. 



Although initially conceived in France, and first 

 considered in relation to the tomb of the Emperor 

 Napoleon I, ultimately all Triqueti's tarsia panels 



that were used as wall decoration were for English 

 locations and for English patrons. These all date to 

 the 1860s, a period when there was considerable 

 interest in new decorative techniques for ceilings 

 and walls, including glass and ceramic mosaic, as 

 is evident in the Albert Memorial Chapel and the 

 South Kensington Museum. One appeal of the 

 technique for England seems to have been its 

 durability. At the time the Teffont Evias panel was 

 completed, it was stressed that the process was 

 ideally suited to the damp English climate: 'It 

 recommends itself by its perfect durability, and the 

 indestructible character of its colours, attributes of 

 no mean value in this country, where the effects of 

 our humid climate render the preservation of other 

 forms of mural decoration, such as fresco painting, 

 both doubtful and difficult'. 59 Other commentators 

 (including an earlier writer in Wiltshire 

 Archaeological and Natural History Magazine) 

 remarked not only upon the durability but also the 

 speed and moderate cost of the process; and several 

 suggested that it would 'inaugurate a new era in 

 the mural decorations of the interiors of our 

 churches and public buildings'. 60 In the event, 

 however, the marble tarsia process seems to have 

 died out with its inventor in the 1870s. 



The panel in Teffont Evias Church occupies an 

 important intermediate stage in Triqueti's 

 development of the process. A larger and more 

 complex composition than the experiments of the 

 1840s, it gave the sculptor an opportunity to execute 

 a piece for a particular location and thus to gauge 

 its effectiveness and practicality for wall decoration. 

 The exhibition of the panel in London in 1863, 

 following on from those shown in the 1862 

 International Exhibition, perhaps encouraged 

 further commissions such as the Marmor 

 Homericum. The later examples show a greater 

 range of coloured marbles and cements, an 

 elaboration of the borders, and far richer detail in 

 the pictures than the Teffont Evias panel due (at 

 least in part) to the technical contribution of Jules 

 Destreez. The interest ofTriqueti's marble tarsia as 

 an example of nineteenth-century revivalism and 

 technical virtuosity, and the paucity of executed 

 works, afford the Teffont Evias panel a special 

 position in the development of the process and, as 

 the first one actually used for wall decoration, it 

 deserves to be more widely known. 



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 



I am grateful to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 

 for graciously allowing me to study and quote from 



