[8] Design for a chimney-piece with a vase at each end of the mantel shelf, a pair of doves in the centre, and an overmantel frame bordered by sprays of fruit, flowers and fronds

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [8] Design for a chimney-piece with a vase at each end of the mantel shelf, a pair of doves in the centre, and an overmantel frame bordered by sprays of fruit, flowers and fronds

Browse

English Baroque Drawings: architecture, sculpture and garden design
- Hampton Court Palace
  - Designs for chimney-pieces, room cornices and entablatures, door cases and internal wall elevations, c.1689-1694, mostly by Grinling Gibbons
    - Thirteen designs for tall and richly sculpted chimney-pieces, in a variety of wash colours; probably for principal state rooms

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM, volume 110/44

Purpose

[8] Design for a chimney-piece with a vase at each end of the mantel shelf, a pair of doves in the centre, and an overmantel frame bordered by sprays of fruit, flowers and fronds

Aspect

Elevation, with incomplete alternative scheme on right

Scale

Not indicated, but about ^7/₈ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

In ink by George Dance at bottom right, Gd, and to right in C19 hand, (43)

Signed and dated

Undated, but datable 1689-94

Medium and dimensions

Pen and russet brown ink over graphite under-drawing, with pink, yellow, yellow-ochre and grey washes and additions in graphite, and with black ink redrawing of base line of design; on laid paper, laid down, with pinkish brown staining in top 35 mm of sheet and small early tear across a corroded area; 7 mm repair strip in wove paper at bottom of sheet, probably 1850; 438 x 225

Hand

Gibbons

Watermark

Countermark: JJ

Notes

A straightforward design, conceived principally for the display of a painting in the overmantel. Within the frame Gibbons has sketched loosely in graphite the subject of the painting, a reclining female figure, possibly Venus, beneath a tree or bower. Another pencilled addition is his caryatid sketched on the right side of the fire surround where he has made the border of the chimney-piece as a whole wider than on the left. The surround to the frame has a bravura display of fruit, flowers, garlands and fronds. On the mantel shelf a gold vase on the left is linked by a swag of flowers to a whorl of acanthus leaves which entwines a pair of billing doves, all washed yellow. The yellow-washed frame along the edge of the chimney breast denotes the fixing for a damask wall covering as the backing for the limewood carving. The fire surround was probably meant to be in white marble.

Literature

Wren Society, IV, pl. 38, bottom

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 22 October 1998 - 24 February 1999

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk