City face-to-face with King Robert the Bruce
New likeness of iconic monarch unveiled atThe Smith
A new bust of King Robert the Bruce was given a right ‘royal’ welcome when it was unveiled at the Stirling Smith last week.
The sculpture is based on the king’s skull, excavated at Dunfermline Abbey in 1818 and has been gifted to Scotland and The Smith.
It was produced by Christian Corbet, sculptor in residence to the Royal Canadian Navy, and challenges and dismisses stories that King Robert had leprosy.
Canada’s Western University anthropology professor Andrew Nelson examined a plaster cast of a skull the family had lent to sculptor Corbet when he was embarking on the work.
Corbet needed to know whether previous depictions of King Robert that showed him disfigured by leprosy were based on forensic evidence or merely on centuries-old rivals’ rumours.
When he examined the cast, Nelson found none of the tell-tale physiological signs that the king, who died in 1329 after 23 years on the throne, had the disease.
The analysis enabled Corbet to shape a bust that shows the king as a fierce and battle-scarred warrior, one without the skin lesions common in leprosy.
The bust is on a plinth made of an oak believed to have been planted by Robert the Bruce himself.
Mr Corbet said: “The work exemplifies the best of multidisciplinary collaboration — the intersection of science, history and art. It’s a new face to a great king, a new face for a great man.”
Lord Charles Bruce and his son Benedict - son and grandson of the Earl of Elgin, the direct descendent of King Robert the Bruce - were special guests at the event.
Also on hand were the Strathleven Artizans, formed in 2005 to promote the historical links between Robert Bruce and the village of Renton in Dumbartonshire which, other than Bannockburn, is the place most associated with him. The Artizans made the plinth for the new Bruce bust from the ancient Bruce oak, felled in the Loch Lomond area, along with beech wood from the Earl of Elgin’s estate at Broomhall, Dunfermline.
It’s a new face to a great king, a new faceforagreatman