Details of Sculptor

Surname

Bennier

Alternative Surname

Besnier

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1681

Year of Death

Biographical Details

On 23 December 1681 John Bennier agreed to cast ‘in hard metle or hardened leads’ (statues) at £40 each, of ‘Diana, the Sabine Woman, Hercules, Commodus, and Antoninus, which shall be in full proportion of posture, dimensions, and full as large as those figures so called now standing and being in his Majesties privie garden, upon which figures hee ... will make and take off his moulds for the more exact casting of the aforesaid figures’. The contract stated that he should ‘cast upon the privie partes of the last mentioned figures ... a piece of drapery or other ornament’ and wait until these modifications had been approved by the Duke and Duchess before casting these last two statues. He also agreed to make sixteen smaller statues, measuring two and a half feet in height, in the same material, for which he would receive £5 each (1).
Literary References: RCHM 1879, pt II, 752; Gunnis 1968, 50