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Inside a drab bungalow in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital in a suburb of south London are two desperately poignant sculptures that date from the final quarter of the 17th century. Called Raving Madness and Melancholy Madness, they are by the sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, who is largely forgotten today. But long before they ended up mouldering in semi-obscurity, Cibber's sculptures decorated the gateposts of Bethlem Hospital, a fearsome institution that was better known by its nickname, "Bedlam".
Each figure depicts a semi-naked man, his head shorn of hair, lying upon a realistically carved replica of a thin straw mat. Raving Madness is in chains, his face a gurning mask of mental anguish. But it is the haunting expression of Melancholy Madness that is most memorable. His eyes stare into the distance, as if his mind is adrift on an ocean of incomprehension.
Somehow Cibber has imbued an unyielding lump of Portland stone with the semblance of a lost soul whose wits are perilously on the turn. It is a work of supreme pathos, which, I like to think, might have given pause for thought to those heartless day-trippers who flocked to Bedlam during the 18th century to mock the "lunatics".
I first came across Cibber's monumental madmen while filming Romancing the Stone, a new three-part series for BBC Four that traces the evolution of British sculpture from the Norman Conquest to the present day (the first episode will be broadcast on Wednesday evening). Before then, I had barely heard of Cibber - his name was only dimly familiar thanks to his more famous son, Colley Cibber, the actor, dramatist and poet laureate.
But I was moved both by the power of his Bedlam sculptures, and by the lamentable situation in which they find themselves today - overlooked, unloved and confined within a tiny gallery at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, which has long since moved from Moorfields to Beckenham, where they are shown alongside a jumble of menacing paraphernalia, including chains and grisly...