Caught between monumental traditions: Grinling Gibbons’s monument to Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell

The memorial commemorating the naval hero Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell (Grinling Gibbons, 1708) was the first national public monument. However, it is not celebrated as such and – nestled in the south choir aisle among the jostling monuments of Westminster Abbey – it is easily overlooked entirely. Historically, it has borne the brunt of the criticisms levelled towards its sculptor. Made famous by his carvings in wood, Gibbons’s reputation as a sculptor of stone is less exalted. This article interrogates the historiographic account of the Shovell monument, focusing on the first public criticisms, penned by Joseph Addison in the Spectator, that emerged within five years of its erection. Addison’s scathing comments have shaped the subsequent scholarly debate; however, he failed to consider the monument’s dual purpose, as a commemoration of Shovell and as a physical emblem of a greater, national loss. The admiral was killed in a shipwreck in which over a thousand of his sailors also lost their lives, the worst disaster to hit the British naval fleet in the period. By reconnecting the monument with the original intentions of its creation, and with its wider national function, this article offers a new perspective on this much-lambasted work.