Cybele and Juno statues finally return to Stowe's south-front portico

(Image credit: Alamy/Stephen Faulkner)

Financial difficulties faced by the Temple-Grenville family of Stowe House, Buckinghamshire, during the 19th and early 20th centuries led to a series of content sales, including one in 1848, when the sculptures of Cybele and Juno from the south-front portico were sold on the same day for £31.10 and £21.

The buyers were a Mr A. Robertson of Fleet Street and Lady Glamis respectively and, whereas the former statue ended up in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, USA, Juno has since been lost.

South Front Portico Statue Cybele — The original Cybele can be found in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, with the new Stowe example a faithful re-creation.

Melanie Whitrow from Stowe House says: ‘Usually, we’re able to track things down… but this one eludes us.’ In December and January, however, reimagined Cybele and Juno were returned to their original locations for the first time in 178 years, marking the culmination of the first quarter-century of the house’s restoration by the Stowe House Preservation Trust.

With no paintings or etchings existing from the time and, therefore, with missing Juno’s features something of a mystery, sculptor Sam Steel was enlisted to design the new statues, for which he used a Getty Museum 3D scan of Cybele (a Roman sculpture dating from about AD50) as a template and drew on comparable surviving examples to reintroduce missing details, such as the nose and left hand.

South Front Portico Statue Juno — The original Juno has been lost, but sculptor Sam Steel took inspiration from Cybele and a statue of Juno Ludovisi from Rome's Museo Nazionale Romano.

For Juno, Steel adapted his Cybele model, introducing a new head from a 3D scan of Juno Ludovisi from Rome’s Museo Nazionale Romano, altering the pose and introducing a peacock, as well as removing Cybele’s lion.

Now they are in situ, a final limewash coat will be applied to each 700kg statue in the spring. ‘Seeing Cybele and Juno arrive has been deeply moving for everyone involved,’ says Anna McEvoy, co-director and house custodian.

Julie Harding is Country Life’s news and property editor. She is a former editor of Your Horse, Country Smallholding and Eventing, a sister title to Horse & Hound, which she ran for 11 years. Julie has a master’s degree in English and she grew up on a working Somerset dairy farm and in a Grade II*-listed farmhouse, both of which imbued her with a love of farming, the countryside and historic buildings. She returned to her Somerset roots 18 years ago after a stint in the ‘big smoke’ (ie, the south east) and she now keeps a raft of animals, which her long-suffering (and heroic) husband, Andrew, and four children, help to look after to varying degrees.