page_title: Welbeck Academy
section_title: Science and mathematics
hierarchical_section_title: Welbeck Academy / Science and mathematics
caption_attribution_description: English: Inspired by love poetry, the notion of Cupid as a hunter imagines the experience of falling in love as the result of an onrushing attack. Nobody is safe from Cupid's bow. His steed is depicted in full gallop, its front hooves lifted, a wonderful display of baroque energy and movement. The Italian sculptor Francesco Fanelli was active in England from about 1630 through 1642. In his treatise on architecture, he proudly described himself as "sculptor to the king of Great Britain." This is one of the models that he and his workshop produced in significant numbers during his years working for Charles I and his court; the version in the king's collection may have been the prototype.
context_page_description: The Welbeck Academy or Welbeck Circle is a name that has been given to the loose intellectual grouping around William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the first half of the 17th century. It takes its name from Welbeck Abbey, a country house in Nottinghamshire that was a Cavendish family seat. Another term used is Newcastle Circle. The geographical connection is, however, more notional than real; and these terms have been regarded also as somewhat misleading. Cavendish was Viscount Mansfield in 1620, and moved up the noble ranks to Duke, step by step; "Newcastle" applies by 1628.
  Newcastle was a royalist exile in continental Europe in the latter part of the First English Civil War and the Interregnum. He then returned to England and lived to 1676. His life shows many instances of cultural and intellectual patronage.
context_section_description: A scientific interest was optics. The group involved in these studies included Charles Cavendish (William's brother), Thomas Hobbes, Robert Payne and Walter Warner. This core "academy" group was disrupted when Newcastle took on responsibility for the Prince of Wales, in 1638. At a later point John Pell was in Newcastle's service. 
  Charles Cavendish's circle included Henry Bond, Richard Reeve or Reeves the instrument-maker, John Twysden and John Wallis. He was a patron of William Oughtred.
caption: One of Francesco Fanelli's popular equestrian small bronzes
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