The British Museum’s Blockbuster Scandals

Townley’s museum was said to rank below only a handful of other private collections in Europe in breadth and quality. According to Max Bryant, the author of a 2017 monograph on Townley and his house, the collection also reflected “an eighteenth-century attitude to art that itself has become lost to modernity.” At the time, ancient sculptures were typically restored right after being excavated—often boldly. Scholars have concluded that Clytie’s bosom was enhanced to accentuate the bust’s erotic charge; Townley’s discobolus, unearthed in a state of decapitation, was fitted with a head from a different sculpture.