FUNERAL EFFIGIES OF NELSON AND PITT THE ELDER SCANNED IN MINUTE DETAIL
Here’s something to wax lyrical about: a team at King’s College London has 3D scanned the funeral effigies of British naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson and 18th- Century prime minister William Pitt the Elder, using a cutting- edge CT scanner at St Thomas’ Hospital.
The waxwork heads were being investigated as part of a collaboration with Westminster Abbey. The team hopes to discover more about the structure and composition of the heads, which are currently undergoing conservation before going back on display.
“Our high-tech scanner is used on a daily basis to diagnose and monitor patients, so it was a very different experience to use it to examine wax effigies which are hundreds of years old,” said Ronak Rajani, consultant cardiologist at St Thomas’. “We hope that the findings from the scans can shed light on how these unique wax works were made.”
The Abbey has a large collection of funeral effigies, dating back hundreds of years. They were originally made to sit on top of the deceased’s coffin, dressed in ceremonial clothes, in memory of the person lying inside. Nelson’s wax head was made during his lifetime and acquired by the Abbey as a tourist attraction after his death, while the wax head of William Pitt is the last known surviving effigy made by famous 18th- Century US wax sculptor Patience Wright.
The two effigies will form part of the display in a new gallery at Westminster Abbey next year.