The six, robed female statues, carved
in Portland stone, are high on the building. From left to right the statues
represent:
Confidence
Prudence
Justice
Truth
Thrift
Self
Denial
The Victorian Web website [visit link]
advises:
"Architectural Sculpture on 13-15
Moorgate (former Metropolitan Life Assurance building). William Silver Frith.
Stone. 1890-93. The statues read from left to right: Confidence, Prudence,
Justice, Truth, Thrift and Self-Denial. On King’s Arms Yard, they read:
Self-Denial and Thrift. At the north end of the building, they read: Truth and
Justice. Located on the west side of Moorgate Street, at the junction with
King's Arms Yard.
The virtues represented by
each of Frith's statues, whether the sculptor's responsibility or that of his
client, the Metropolitan Life Assurance company, embody the problematic nature
of a secular iconography applied to temples of capitalism. Ruskin, of course,
had no trouble at all listing the attributes of what he took to be England's
true object of worship, the Goddess of Getting-on: partridges for lack of
courage and so on. And when the Victoria & Albert wanted to create a
pantheon of British artists, sculptors, architects, and designers, many of the
choices — Gainsborough, Constable, Turner — seemed obvious, though to be sure,
some of the medieval examples seem as much a matter of myth as history. Choosing
representative great men in the Carlylean fashion worked very well in the case
of the V&A as it did on Sir William Tite's Royal Exchange, whose worthies
appropriately include include merchants, financiers, and entrepreneurs like Sir
Hugh Myddleton, Sir Richard Whittington, and Sir Thomas Gresham. Another
successful approach to secular iconography for architectural sculpture appears
in choosing to depict the details of a specific trade, such as Benjamin Creswick
did on the wonderful Cutlers Hall frieze. Another, more complex approach takes
the form of representing a wide number of professions and occupations as
Thornycroft did in two ways on Institute for Chartered Accountants, the first in
the form of a frieze as realistic depictions of specific crafts and occupations,
the second in the form of symbolic figures, such as Shipping or Railways over
windows.
In contrast, to embellish
commercial buildings with allegories of abstract virtues can have mixed results,
in part because, as we see on the Metropolitan Life Assurance building, viewers
cannot always tell to whom the virtues supposedly apply. Yes, one does want
one's insurance company to invest one's payments with confidence, and especially
with prudence. One also wants it to tell the truth, but justice seems a little
odd as an attribute, truth or honesty being what's needed. But exactly to whom
does thrift and self-denial apply — to the customers, to the insured, not, one
assumes, to the company? The individual statues are quite attractive, though
giving truth a mirror, an attribute also almost universally assigned to vanity
and Venus seems unfortunate."