There are impressive classical vistas in Glasgow’s central district. George Square boasts a lofty column with a statue of Sir Walter Scott—the city’s answer to the Nelson Monument in London—and peripheral statues of other Scottish worthies. Erected late in the nineteenth century, the City Chambers building, with its lofty tower and spectacular sculptural decoration, faces the square, while the nearby Athenaeum, which dates to the same period, is endowed with an imposing Ionic order crowned by figures of Flaxman, Purcell, Reynolds and Wren. In front of the City Chambers lies a formidable memorial to the Great War in a somewhat spare, more abstract classical idiom, but nevertheless superb in its mass and sculptural detail. For half a century, this memorial looked like the Great Tradition’s final civic contribution to Glasgow.

No longer. A block from George Square, redevelopment of a rather non-descript, 120-year-old sandstone office building as a mixed-use complex called the Italian Center got underway in the late 1980s. Atop one side of the building, Alexander Stoddart’s free-standing Italia now holds a flowering wand aloft, a large cornucopia at her side. Her archaic facial profile, hair, drapery and castellated crown make for a handsome figure. Above another façade repose two very fine seated Mercuries, one holding the caduceus, the other a moneybag—emblems of art and commerce. On the street below, Stoddart’s exquisite standing Mercury, holding both attributes, relaxes with one forearm perched on a tree stump…