Homage to Sir Thomas Browne - Hay Hill, Norwich
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SMacB
N 52° 37.644 E 001° 17.574
31U E 384456 N 5832191
Norwich City Council commissioned the artists Anne and Patrick Poirier to produce a 'Homage to Thomas Browne' in 2005 to mark the quatercentenary of his birth - the piece features a marble eye and brain and various seats and benches which have been located in front of his statue.
Waymark Code: WMQQJM
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/19/2016
Views: 5
"Description (physical)-
The sculpture forms a ‘salon’ or room with stone furniture for the use of those who may pass by and stop, suggested in the City Council’s brief which also noted the paths through Hay Hill. These provide the main viewpoints for the sculpture with views of the key pieces, the eye and brain, from the major approaches. The ‘salon’ is arranged following the quincunx, which (to quote from Sebald, Rings of Saturn,London, 1999, 20-21): ‘is composed by using the corners of a regular quadrilateral and the point at which its diagonals intersect' since Sir Thomas had argued - in the Garden of Cyrus - that the quincunx was the fundamental principle of natural order as rays strike the eye, fundamental for our perception of creation. The beautifully polished marble block with the eye is the outstanding single piece, its high polish toned down in the brain, which is angled towards the site once occupied by Sir Thomas’s house on Orford Place. The brain was chosen to complement the eye, since in a key passage in Religio Medici Sir Thomas noted that although humans were superior to beasts because of their spirituality and belief in a supreme Christian creator, yet 'in the study of (human) anatomy ...there is not any thing of moment more than I can discover in the cranie (head) of a beast. In addition to the eye and brain the 'salon' is made up of: five polished granite seats decorated with a schematic brain showing the connections between the major areas of memory, sight, creativity etc set out in a quincunce - three in line from the statue of Sir Tomas Browne two at the sides. To these were added: two large curved benches of granite, with two low tables polished granite; two polished granite curved lozenges and five round stools of polished granite. Twenty-two circular red blue green and white lights are set into the pavement.
Inscriptions -
On eye: MEMORABILIA;
On benches: URNE BURRIALS/ VULGAR ERRORS;
On low tables: RELIGIO MEDICI/GARDEN OF CYRUS;
On lozenges: AMPHIBIUM/BRAMPTON URNS.
These refer to Sir Thomas's major publications: Religio Medici (best understood as: the Christian Beliefs of a Doctor), his most famous book, was written in 1636 and published in authorised form in 1643; Vulgar errors is the common title for 'Pseudodoxia epidemica or enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths', published in 1646; Hydriotaphia, the original title of Urne Burials, was published in 1658 together with The Garden of Cyrus. (The most accessible modern edition is that by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, Sir Thomas Browne Selected Writings, London, 1968) "
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