2026年2月20日 星期五

格蕾絲·唐卡斯特與純真之後:一位史家追尋艾佛列·德瑞「純真年代」背後的模特兒

 格蕾絲·唐卡斯特與純真之後:一位史家追尋艾佛列·德瑞「純真年代」背後的模特兒


身為一位追尋公共紀念碑背後平凡生命的史家,我常常被那些沒有留下姓名、卻成為圖騰的面孔吸引。格蕾絲·唐卡斯特(Gracie Doncaster)正是這樣的人物:她是唐卡斯特家三個女兒中最小的一位,並非透過自己的雄心壯志,而是透過雕塑家艾佛列·德瑞(Alfred Drury)的目光,進入了藝術史。她的形象被凝結在德瑞一八九七年創作的胸像《純真年代》(The Age of Innocence)之中,這件作品後來成為十九世紀末英國「新雕塑」(New Sculpture)運動最具代表性的作品之一。

格蕾絲成長在一個與藝術圈密切往來的家庭。唐卡斯特一家與德瑞是好友,雕塑家的工作室與家庭生活與他們交織在一起,讓他的女兒們自然而然成為他的模特兒。格蕾絲作為最小的女兒,被選為《純真年代》的原型,這尊尺寸不大卻極具表現力的胸像,捕捉了一名孩童既端莊又脆弱的神情。藝術史家班尼迪克·里德(Benedict Read)等人將這件作品視為「新雕塑」的「主要圖騰」之一,而格蕾絲的面容,便成了這場運動的人性面孔。

她的姊妹,克萊莉(Clarrie)與艾爾西(Elsie)·唐卡斯特,也同樣走入德瑞的創作世界。克萊莉與艾爾西曾為其他雕塑擔任模特兒,包括矗立在利茲市廣場(City Square, Leeds)的寓言人物《晨曦》(Morning)與《暮色》(Evening)。三姐妹共同構成了一個鮮為人知的「繆思王朝」:她們並非專業模特兒,而是普通的女孩,卻因德瑞之手,被提升為公共藝術中的形象。她們的故事提醒我們,許多維多利亞與愛德華時期的雕塑,並非抽象的理想,而是真實家庭中真實孩童的肖像,靜靜嵌入城市空間之中。

格蕾絲的遺產之所以特別動人,在於她的形象如何超越單一物件而不斷複製。《純真年代》以青銅、大理石與石膏等多種媒材存在,並被泰特美術館(Tate Gallery)與維多利亞與艾伯特博物館(V&A Museum)等重要機構收藏。從紐卡索到巴黎,這件作品的各種版本在畫廊與拍賣行中出現,每一次鑄造都為同一張精緻的面容帶來不同的光澤。從這個角度來看,格蕾絲的「後代」並非血緣上的子嗣,而是雕塑上的子孫:一組胸像,將她的形象帶往時間與空間的各個角落。

然而,格蕾絲本人的歷史紀錄卻極為稀薄。她主要透過德瑞的作品與隨後的目錄出現;她自己的聲音、她往後的人生、她對自己被塑造成「純真」圖騰的反思,幾乎都已消失。這種缺席本身也是一則歷史教訓:正是那種將面容永恆化的過程,可能抹去面容背後的真人。作為一位史家,我只能在胸像光滑的表面與那些提到「格蕾絲·唐卡斯特,雕塑家友人的女兒」的檔案碎片之間,尋找線索,並思考她如何理解自己在這場雕塑生命中的角色。

格蕾絲·唐卡斯特的故事,是私人生涯如何滋養公共藝術的縮影。她的形象被德瑞之手塑造,再被無數次複製,成為討論童年、美與新雕塑的標誌。但它也引發一個更私密的問題:那個藏在大理石背後的女孩,後來怎麼了?在追尋格蕾絲·唐卡斯特的「後代」時,我找到的並非她親生的子女,而是一系列雕塑——每一尊都是對那個瞬間的紀念:一名普通的女兒,如何在一整個世紀又更久的時間裡,成為純真的面孔。


Here is a list of known versions of The Age of Innocence (bust of Gracie Doncaster) by Alfred Drury, with their media and holding institutions or notable provenance:

Bronze versions

  • Bronze bust, c.1896–1897

    • Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1897; later sold by Phillips, London, on 23 September 1997 (signed and dated 1896).

  • Bronze bust

    • Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

  • Bronze bust

    • Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK

  • Bronze bust

    • Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, UK

  • Bronze bust on green marble plinth

    • National Trust Collections (held in a National Trust property; object record 1214291)

  • Bronze bust, 1911

    • Offered at auction by Christie’s (signed and dated “A. DRURY 1911” on base)

Marble versions

  • Marble bust

    • Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK

  • Marble bust

    • Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Blackburn, UK

  • Marble bust (formerly)

    • Luxembourg Museum (Musée du Luxembourg), Paris, France (no longer listed there; “formerly in” collection)

Plaster / model version

  • Plaster cast bust, 1897

    • Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (Accession A.31–2000; plaster model used to produce later bronze and marble versions)

These are the principal institutional and documented versions of The Age of Innocence that directly reproduce Gracie Doncaster’s likeness. Additional bronze and marble casts have appeared at auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Bonhams, but the above list covers the main named institutions and significant public‑collection examples.


Gracie Doncaster and the Offspring of Innocence: A Historian’s Search for the Model Behind Alfred Drury’s “The Age of Innocence”

 Gracie Doncaster and the Offspring of Innocence: A Historian’s Search for the Model Behind Alfred Drury’s “The Age of Innocence”


As a historian tracing the quiet lives behind public monuments, one is often drawn not to kings or generals, but to the unnamed faces that become icons. Gracie Doncaster is such a figure: the youngest of three daughters in the Doncaster family, she entered art history not through her own ambition, but through the gaze of the sculptor Alfred Drury. Her image—frozen in his 1897 bust The Age of Innocence—has since become one of the defining works of the “New Sculpture” movement in late‑nineteenth‑century Britain.

Gracie grew up in a household closely connected to the artistic world. The Doncaster family were friends of Alfred Drury, whose studio and home life intersected with theirs, creating an intimate setting in which his daughters naturally became his models. Gracie, the youngest, was chosen for The Age of Innocence, a small but profoundly expressive bust that captures a child’s poised vulnerability. Art historians such as Benedict Read have described the work as one of the “major icons” of the New Sculpture, a movement that sought to combine naturalism with symbolic feeling, and Gracie’s features became its human face.

Her sisters, Clarrie and Elsie Doncaster, also stepped into Drury’s creative orbit. Clarrie and Elsie posed for other sculptures, including the allegorical figures Morning and Evening that stand in City Square, Leeds. Together, the three sisters form a little‑known dynasty of muses: not professional models, but ordinary girls whose likenesses were elevated into public art. Their story reminds us that many Victorian and Edwardian sculptures are not abstract ideals, but portraits of real children from real families, quietly embedded in civic spaces.

What makes Gracie’s legacy especially poignant is the way her image has multiplied beyond a single object. The Age of Innocence exists in multiple media—bronze, marble, and plaster—and is held by major institutions such as the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Versions have appeared in galleries and auction houses from Newcastle to Paris, each casting a slightly different light on the same delicate features. In this sense, Gracie’s “offspring” are not biological, but sculptural: a family of busts that carry her likeness across time and space.

Yet the historical record of Gracie herself remains thin. She appears mainly through Drury’s work and the catalogues that follow it; her own voice, her later life, her reflections on being turned into an icon of “innocence” are largely lost. This absence is itself a historical lesson: the very process that immortalises a face can erase the person behind it. As a historian, one is left to read between the lines—between the bust’s smooth surface and the archival fragments that mention “Gracie Doncaster, daughter of a friend of the sculptor”—and to wonder how she understood her own role in this sculptural afterlife.

Gracie Doncaster’s story is, in miniature, the story of how private lives feed public art. Her image, shaped by Drury’s hand and then endlessly reproduced, has become a touchstone for discussions of childhood, beauty, and the New Sculpture. But it also invites a more intimate question: what becomes of the girl inside the marble? In searching for the “offspring” of Gracie Doncaster, one finds not children of her own, but a lineage of sculptures—each one a small monument to the moment when an ordinary daughter became, for a century and more, the face of innocence.



Here is a list of known versions of The Age of Innocence (bust of Gracie Doncaster) by Alfred Drury, with their media and holding institutions or notable provenance:

Bronze versions

  • Bronze bust, c.1896–1897

    • Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1897; later sold by Phillips, London, on 23 September 1997 (signed and dated 1896).

  • Bronze bust

    • Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

  • Bronze bust

    • Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK

  • Bronze bust

    • Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, UK

  • Bronze bust on green marble plinth

    • National Trust Collections (held in a National Trust property; object record 1214291)

  • Bronze bust, 1911

    • Offered at auction by Christie’s (signed and dated “A. DRURY 1911” on base)

Marble versions

  • Marble bust

    • Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK

  • Marble bust

    • Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Blackburn, UK

  • Marble bust (formerly)

    • Luxembourg Museum (Musée du Luxembourg), Paris, France (no longer listed there; “formerly in” collection)

Plaster / model version

  • Plaster cast bust, 1897

    • Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (Accession A.31–2000; plaster model used to produce later bronze and marble versions)

These are the principal institutional and documented versions of The Age of Innocence that directly reproduce Gracie Doncaster’s likeness. Additional bronze and marble casts have appeared at auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Bonhams, but the above list covers the main named institutions and significant public‑collection examples.



家中的特洛伊木馬:這次「木馬」甚至不是免費的

 家中的特洛伊木馬:這次「木馬」甚至不是免費的


特洛伊木馬的故事,幾個世紀以來都在提醒我們:有些「禮物」背後藏著敵人。如今這個隱喻顯得異常貼近現實:在許多家庭裡,那匹「木馬」不僅不再免費,還可能正在實時監視、聆聽,甚至繪製你私密空間的地圖。科技媒體 The Verge 近日報導的一起事件,就揭露了現代智慧家電如何變成特洛伊式的後門。

西班牙工程師 Sammy Azdoufal 原本並不想駭入全世界的掃地機器人。他只是想用 PS5 手把遠端操控新買的 DJI Romo,於是自己寫了遙控 App,並逆向分析 DJI 的通訊流程。沒想到,當他的程式連上 DJI 伺服器後,看到的不只是自己的機器,而是全球約 7,000 台 Romo 的即時資料,瞬間讓他變成無意間可以指揮成千上萬台掃地機器人的「王者」。

在測試中,他能遠端操控機器人、觀看即時鏡頭畫面、聽到麥克風收音,還能看著機器人建立 2D 平面圖,並用 IP 位址推估大致位置。他只抽出了自己的私密 token(讓伺服器認得「你可以看你的資料」的鑰匙),伺服器卻把別人的資料也一併交了出來。他形容「我的裝置只是資訊汪洋中的一台」,揭露了只要一扇門打開,就可能看到整片海洋。

在現場示範中,他的筆電每 3 秒就收到大量裝置的 MQTT 訊息:序號、正在清掃的房間、行進距離、是否回充電座、遇到的障礙等。短短 9 分鐘,他就盤點到 24 國、約 6,700 台裝置,累積超過 100,000 則訊息;若再加上同樣連到這些伺服器的 DJI Power 行動電源,可見裝置數甚至破萬。只要輸入 14 位數的序號,他就能查到媒體同事正在測試的那台 Romo,看到它在客廳清掃、電量 80%,並在不同國家遠端看著它把住宅格局正確建模。

Azdoufal 通報後,DJI 緊急修補,先是限制權限,讓他無法再操控別人的機器或看即時畫面與麥克風;隔天連他自己機器的資料也看不到了,顯示主要漏洞可能已補上。但這起事件仍引發對 DJI 資安與資料治理的質疑:一個工程師都能「撞」到成千上萬台裝置,如果是惡意攻擊者呢?再加上掃地機器人配備麥克風本身就讓人不安,他也直言「吸塵器上裝了麥克風真的很怪」。

DJI 後來承認,問題核心在於「後端權限驗證」,也就是裝置與伺服器之間以 MQTT 為基礎的通訊權限控管。公司表示 1 月底內部檢視時發現漏洞,2 月 8 日先推第一波修補,2 月 10 日再完成第二波更新,並稱已全數解決且不需使用者操作。DJI 也駁斥「不加密傳輸」的說法,強調 Romo 與伺服器之間以 TLS 加密傳輸。但研究者指出,就算「管道」加密,若缺乏細緻的 topic 權限控管,同一系統內的越權訂閱仍可能看到大量裝置訊息。TLS 擋得住竊聽,卻擋不住系統內部的權限失守。

Azdoufal 表示,目前仍有其他漏洞未完全修好,例如可在不輸入安全 PIN 的情況下看自己的 Romo 影像串流,另有更嚴重的問題他選擇暫不公開,DJI 則稱會在這週內處理。

這起事件的真正重點,不只是某一款產品的 bug,而是一種模式:許多「智慧」家電預裝了鏡頭、麥克風與雲端連線,被包裝成便利,實則可能成為監視工具。家中的特洛伊木馬,不再是被留在城門外的木馬,而是我們自己掏錢買回來、插上電、請進臥室與客廳的光鮮家電。這次,那匹木馬甚至不是免費的——它的代價,可能不是金錢,而是隱私。



The Trojan Horse in Our Homes: When the “Smart” Vacuum Costs More Than Money

 The Trojan Horse in Our Homes: When the “Smart” Vacuum Costs More Than Money


For centuries, the story of the Trojan Horse has served as a warning about gifts that carry hidden enemies. Today, that metaphor feels disturbingly literal: in many homes, the “horse” is no longer free, and it may be watching, listening, and mapping our private spaces in real time. A recent report by The Verge about a security researcher’s accidental discovery inside DJI’s Romo robot vacuum illustrates how modern smart devices can become Trojan‑style backdoors into our lives.

Spanish engineer Sammy Azdoufal did not set out to hack the world’s robot vacuums. He simply wanted to control his newly bought DJI Romo with a PS5 controller, so he wrote his own remote‑control app and reverse‑engineered DJI’s communication flow. When his app connected to DJI’s servers, however, it did not see just his device. Instead, it received live data from roughly 7,000 Romo units around the world, suddenly turning him into an unintended “commander” of thousands of strangers’ household robots.

In his tests, Azdoufal was able to remotely move the vacuums, view live camera feeds, and even hear audio from their microphones. He could watch each robot build detailed 2D floor plans of homes and use IP addresses to approximate their locations. He described extracting only his own private authentication token—the key that tells the server “you are allowed to see your data”—yet the server handed over other people’s data as well. “My device was just one in an ocean of information,” he said, revealing how easily one user’s access could bleed into everyone else’s.

During a live demonstration, his laptop received MQTT messages from thousands of devices every three seconds: serial numbers, which room was being cleaned, distance travelled, whether the robot was returning to its dock, and what obstacles it had encountered. In just nine minutes, he catalogued about 6,700 units across 24 countries, logging more than 100,000 messages. When he included DJI Power power banks connected to the same servers, the visible device count exceeded 10,000. By typing in a 14‑digit serial number, he could pull up a colleague’s Romo in another country, see it cleaning the living room, check its 80% battery, and watch it map the home layout in real time.

After Azdoufal alerted the media, DJI moved quickly. By Tuesday, he could no longer control other people’s Romos or view live video or microphone feeds. By Wednesday morning, even his own device disappeared from his scanner, suggesting that DJI had closed the main leak. Yet the episode raised serious questions about DJI’s security and data governance: if a curious engineer could stumble on a flaw exposing thousands of devices, what could a malicious actor do? And why does a vacuum cleaner need a microphone at all?

DJI later acknowledged that the core issue lay in backend permission validation—how devices and servers manage access via MQTT‑based communication. The company said it had internally detected the vulnerability in late January, rolled out an initial patch on February 8, and completed a second update on February 10, claiming the problem was fully resolved without user action. DJI also denied that data was transmitted unencrypted, insisting that Romo communicates with servers over TLS. However, researchers point out that even with encrypted channels, poor topic‑level permission controls can still allow an authorized client to see messages from many unrelated devices. Encryption protects the pipe, not the permissions inside the system.

Azdoufal noted that other vulnerabilities remain, such as being able to view his own Romo’s video stream without entering a security PIN, and at least one more serious flaw he chose not to disclose. DJI said it would address these issues within the week.

The real story here is not just a bug in one product line; it is a pattern. Many of today’s “smart” home devices come pre‑installed with cameras, microphones, and cloud connectivity, sold as conveniences but capable of functioning as surveillance tools. The Trojan Horse in our homes is no longer a wooden gift left at the gate; it is a sleek, branded appliance we willingly plug in ourselves, pay for, and invite into our bedrooms and living rooms. This time, the horse is not even free—and its price may be measured not in gold, but in privacy.