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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cibber, Caius Gabriel

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20552681911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 6 — Cibber, Caius Gabriel

CIBBER (or Cibert), CAIUS GABRIEL (1630–1700), Danish sculptor, was born at Flensburg. He was the son of the king’s cabinetmaker, and was sent to Rome at the royal charge while yet a youth. He came to England during the Protectorate, or during the first, years of the Restoration. Besides the famous statues of Melancholy and Raving Madness (“great Cibber’s brazen brainless brothers”), now at South Kensington, Cibber produced the bas-reliefs round the monument on Fish Street Hill.. The several kings of England and the Sir Thomas Gresham executed by him for the Royal Exchange were destroyed with the building itself in 1838. Cibber was long employed by the fourth earl of Devonshire, and many fine specimens of his work are to be seen at Chatsworth. Under that nobleman he took up arms in 1688 for William of Orange, and was appointed in return carver to the king’s closet. He died rich, and, according to Horace Walpole, built the Danish church in London, where he lies buried beside his second wife, to whom he erected a monument. She was a Miss Colley of Glaiston, grand-daughter of Sir Anthony Colley, and the mother of his son Colley Cibber.