The Trusty Servant

Last updated

The Trusty Servant and accompanying Latin and English texts, on the wall beside the kitchen, Winchester College, first painted in 1579 by John Hoskins. The current painting is by William Cave, 1809. Trusty Servant and texts.jpg
The Trusty Servant and accompanying Latin and English texts, on the wall beside the kitchen, Winchester College, first painted in 1579 by John Hoskins. The current painting is by William Cave, 1809.

The Trusty Servant is an emblematic figure in a painting at Winchester College and the name of the college's alumni magazine.

The wall-painting called The Trusty Servant was painted by John Hoskins in 1579. [1] It was reworked by William Cave in 1809, giving the painting now on display there. [2] It hangs outside the kitchen of Winchester College in Hampshire, England. [3]

The American author Arthur Cleveland Coxe (1818-1896) described "the time-honoured Hircocervus , or picture of 'the Trusty-servant,' which hangs near the kitchen, and which emblematically sets forth those virtues in domestics, of which we Americans know nothing. It is a figure, part man, part porker, part deer, and part donkey; with a padlock on his mouth, and various other symbols in his hands and about his person, the whole signifying a most valuable character." [4]

The painting of The Trusty Servant had a didactic function: it is accompanied by allegorical verses that associate the servant's various animal parts with distinctive virtues that the students of Winchester College were meant to follow. [5]

Texts accompanying The Trusty Servant painting on the wall beside the kitchen in Winchester College [3] [6]
Latin English

Effigiem servi si vis spectare probati,
Quisquis es, haec oculos pascat imago tuos.
Porcinum os quocunque cibo jejunia sedat:
Haec sera, consilium ne fiat, arcta premit.
Dat patientem asinus dominis jurgantibus aurem;
Cervus habet celeres ire, redire, pedes.
Laeva docet multum tot rebus onusta laborem;
Vestis munditiem, dextera aperta fidem.
Accinctus gladio, clypeo munitus ; et inde
Vel se, vel Dominum, quo tueatur, habet.

A Trusty Servant's Portrait would you see,
This Emblematic Figure well Survey.
The Porker's Snout not Nice in diet shows;
The Padlock Shut, no Secrets he'll disclose;
Patient the Ass, his Master's wrath will bear;
Swiftness in Errand, the Stagges feet declare;
Loaded his left Hand, apt to Labour saith;
The Vest his Neatness; Open hand his Faith;
Girt with his Sword, his Shield upon his Arm,
Himself and Master he'll protect from Harm.

Legacy

In 2014 Winchester College commissioned a medal by Old Wykehamist Anthony Smith to be awarded to staff in recognition of "Long And Loyal Service". The medal features a relief sculpture of The Trusty Servant as it appears in the painting. [7]

The Trusty Servant is the name of the Winchester College alumni magazine. [8]

There is a Trusty Servant Inn at Minstead in the New Forest. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hampshire</span> County of England

Hampshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to approximately 1.9 million people, Hampshire is the 5th-most populous county in England. Its largest settlements are the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth. The county town is Winchester. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, Wiltshire to the north-west, West Sussex to the south-east, and Dorset to the south-west. The county contains two national parks: the New Forest and part of the South Downs, which together cover 45 per cent of Hampshire.

Winchester College is a public school with some provision for day pupils, in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 for New College, Oxford, and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the nine schools considered by the Clarendon Commission. The school has begun the transition to become co-educational and has accepted day pupils from September 2022, having previously been a boys' boarding school for over 600 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Zorach</span> American sculptor

William Zorach was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts. He is notable for being at the forefront of American artists embracing cubism, as well as for his sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kingsclere</span> Human settlement in England

Kingsclere is a large village and civil parish in Hampshire, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Swain Gifford</span> American painter

Robert Swain Gifford was an American landscape painter. He was influenced by the Barbizon school.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiger Inn</span> United States historic place

Tiger Inn is one of the eleven active eating clubs at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. Tiger Inn was founded in 1890 and is one of the "Big Four" eating clubs at Princeton, the four oldest and most prestigious on campus. Tiger Inn is the third oldest Princeton Eating Club. Its historic clubhouse is located at 48 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, near the Princeton University campus. Members of "T.I." also frequently refer to the club as "The Glorious Tiger Inn."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Graves</span> American painter

Nancy Graves was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime-filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in many public collections, including those of the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), the Des Moines Art Center, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Museum of Fine Arts. When Graves was just 29, she was given a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the time she was the youngest artist, and fifth woman to achieve this honor.

<i>The Milkmaid</i> (Vermeer) 1658–1661 painting by Johannes Vermeer

The Milkmaid, sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a "milkmaid", in fact, a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which regards it as "unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minstead</span> Human settlement in England

Minstead is a small village and civil parish in the New Forest, Hampshire, about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of Lyndhurst. There is a shop and a pub, the Trusty Servant. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's grave is under a large tree at the back of the 13th century All Saints' church.

<i>The Monarch of the Glen</i> (painting) Painting by Edwin Henry Landseer

The Monarch of the Glen is an oil-on-canvas painting of a red deer stag completed in 1851 by the English painter Sir Edwin Landseer. It was commissioned as part of a series of three panels to hang in the Palace of Westminster, in London. As one of the most popular paintings throughout the 19th century, it sold widely in reproductions in steel engraving, and was finally bought by companies to use in advertising. The painting had become something of a cliché by the mid-20th century, as "the ultimate biscuit tin image of Scotland: a bulky stag set against the violet hills and watery skies of an isolated wilderness", according to the Sunday Herald.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hoskins (poet)</span> English poet and politician (1566–1638)

Serjeant John Hoskins or Hoskyns was an English poet, scholar of Greek, lawyer, judge and politician.

Garrick Salisbury Palmer is an English painter, wood engraver, photographer and teacher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith beheading Holofernes</span> Biblical episode and artistic theme

The account of the beheading of Holofernes by Judith is given in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, and is the subject of many paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In the story, Judith, a beautiful widow, is able to enter the tent of Holofernes because of his desire for her. Holofernes was an Assyrian general who was about to destroy Judith's home, the city of Bethulia. Overcome with drink, he passes out and is decapitated by Judith; his head is taken away in a basket.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Arnald</span> English painter

George Arnald was a British painter who specialised in landscapes, including topographical views to illustrated county histories. He is best known for his celebrated painting depicting the Battle of the Nile.

John White was a Headmaster and Warden of Winchester College during the English Reformation who, remaining staunchly Roman Catholic in duty to his mentor Stephen Gardiner, became Bishop of Lincoln and finally Bishop of Winchester during the reign of Queen Mary. For several years he led the college successfully through very difficult circumstances. A capable if somewhat scholastic composer of Latin verse, he embraced the rule of Philip and Mary enthusiastically and vigorously opposed the Reformation theology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hircocervus</span> Legendary creature

The hircocervus or tragelaph, also known as a goat-stag, was a legendary creature imagined to be half-goat, half-stag.

Sir John Hawles (1645–1716), of Lincoln's Inn, was an English lawyer and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1689 and 1710.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maricel Museum</span>

The Maricel Museum is a museum located in the centre of Sitges; reopened after a major refurbishment in 2015.

<i>Jupiter and Antiope</i> (Watteau) Painting by Antoine Watteau

Jupiter and Antiope is an oil painting by the French artist Antoine Watteau. It is also known as the Satyr and the Sleeping Nymph and was probably painted between 1714 and 1719. Intended to be placed over a doorway, today it hangs in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

<i>Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam</i> Painting by Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein the Younger painted the Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam several times, and his paintings were much copied, at the time and later. It is difficult to disentangle Holbein's original work from that of his workshop and other copyists. Possibly five largely original versions survive, as well as a number of drawings made as studies.

References

  1. Pattern Histories: The Trusty Servant Archived 2008-12-04 at the Wayback Machine accessed 29 May 2007
  2. Pevsner, Nikolaus; Lloyd, David (1967). Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Yale University Press. p. 703. OCLC   850028671.
  3. 1 2 "A good servant, represented as a hybrid creature combining a man, a pig, an ass and a deer, carrying cleaning implements and having a padlocked mouth. Engraving, 1749, after J. Hoskins". Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
  4. Coxe, Arthur Cleveland (1874). Impressions of England. J. B. Lippincott. p. 249.
  5. Mark Thornton Burnett, Constructing "monsters" in Shakespearean drama and early modern culture (New York: Macmillan, 2002), 139.
  6. Combe, William (1816). The history of the colleges of Winchester, Eton, and Westminster. London: R. Ackermann. pp. 43–44.
  7. "Trusty Servant Medal". Anthony Smith Sculpture. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  8. "The Trusty Servant Archive". Winchester College . Retrieved 4 November 2022.
  9. "The Trusty Servant Inn: Est. 1896". The Trusty Servant. Retrieved 4 November 2022.