Prophet

WALL LABEL: Two prophets c.1520-30

In the late 1940s the Art Gallery approached H.D. Molesworth, a keeper (now known as a curator) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and engaged him to build a representative collection of European sculpture, from the medieval era to the nineteenth century. Over the course of a mere two to three years, Molesworth assembled a small, but important, selection of sculptural works, including these prophets.

At the time, funds for acquisitions of this nature were small and so Molesworth needed to be judicious with his buying and selected works that may have been overlooked by the major collecting institutions due to the conservation work they needed. In many cases, this meant the works acquired by AGSA had undergone very little treatment or repair – repair that often removed the original paint to make the works look more authentic. Today we can appreciate the inherent beauty of these works since they have been treated according to contemporary conservation principles; that is, to work with what is there and only undertake treatments that are wholly reversable. These wonderful prophets retain much of their original paint work and show their 500+ year history, travelling from Antwerp to London and on to Adelaide.

Tansy Curtin, Curator of International Art Pre-1980