and I saw nothing but clouds … presently I saw buildings below me and soon the eagle alighted in the midst of a great city; and this, I said to myself in my dream, this is Rome! (Eastlake 1870, p. 38) During his early days in the city he had the great fortune to train under both Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen (Roscoe and Hardy 2009, p. 522). He referred continuously to Canova as his “master”, particularly in his memoirs, which he dictated to Margarete Sandbach at the beginning of the 1850s; these were subsequently published by Lady Eastlake in 1870. Moreover, he claimed to be Canova’s last pupil in a letter to Antonio Gacini, Secretary of the Royal Academy in Milan in 1861, written to thank the Academy for accepting him as an Honorary Member: “The first instruction which I received in my art was from an Italian. It was Canova whose pupil I became in the year 1817 and studied under him for five years when he died. I was his last pupil” (Royal Academy Archive GI/1376). By 1821, Gibson had established his own studio in the via Fontanella, off the via Babuino. From here he aimed to produce sculpture of “the sublime and the purest beauty”, believing that the sculptor’s role was to select and combine the most beautiful parts of nature to create a harmonious whole, which would delight and elevate the viewer. By the mid nineteenth century he was one of the few remaining exponents of the so-called ‘pure’ and ‘neo-Hellenistic’ style of sculpture, resolutely upholding the Neoclassical ideals established by Wincklemann, in a period when naturalism and modern subjects preoccupied the majority of artists in Europe (Turner, ed., 1996, p. 598). Gibson was convinced of the importance of disseminating artistic ideas through the younger generations, an ideal no doubt impressed upon him by Canova, and established ‘the British Academy of Arts in Rome’. His students included William Theed (1804–1891), Benjamin Spence (1822–1866), Harriet Hosmer (1830–1908), Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) and Richard James Wyatt (1795–1850), and this collection of British expatriate artists became affectionately known as ‘the Roman School of British Sculpture’. His impact on the young artists of the day is perfectly expressed by the bust of Gibson executed by William Theed in 1868 (Frasca-Rath 2016, p. 29). The present work is proudly and typically signed: I GIBSON FECIT ROMAE. Other popular variations of Gibson’s signature include Fecit epoiei Romae, or simply Rome, which he used as a seal of quality for his works (Frasca-Rath 2016, p. 12). In 1996, the present exquisite statue was listed in The Grove Dictionary of Art simply as “untraced”. However, by 2009, the work had re-surfaced through its loan to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow, and Roscoe recorded it as: “41. 1826 … Cupid drawing his bow … M[arble] … (coll. Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 5th Bt); Glasgow Museums TEMP.15367” (Roscoe and Hardy 2009, p. 524). The patron was Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, who had stayed in Rome during the winter of 1826, paying a visit to Gibson’s studio. Gibson wrote a lucid account of the meeting: