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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [2] Sketch design for alternative chimney-pieces, left and right, with a tall frame in the overmantel, bordered on left with suspended drapery and foliage and on right with foliage and putti, and with alternative fire surround panels, the right one oval, shaded pink, and surmounted by a crown and putti on the mantel shelf.
  • image SM, volume 110/33
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Reference number

SM, volume 110/33

Purpose

[2] Sketch design for alternative chimney-pieces, left and right, with a tall frame in the overmantel, bordered on left with suspended drapery and foliage and on right with foliage and putti, and with alternative fire surround panels, the right one oval, shaded pink, and surmounted by a crown and putti on the mantel shelf.

Aspect

Elevation, with alternatives left and right

Scale

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

Inscribed

In graphite, by Gibbons, in top right, G L; and in ink by Dance, bottom right, Gd, and below in C19 hand, (33)

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but probably dating 1689-94

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink over graphite under-drawing with pink, yellow ochre and grey-green wash; on smooth laid white writing paper, with laid lines 25 mm apart (identical paper to 110/42 and probably cut from same sheet); 375 x 237

Hand

Gibbons

Watermark

Countermark: CDG (from mill of Abraham Jansen)

Notes

The design presents alternatives for pendant foliage and drapery motifs, hung from a central drapery knot above the picture frame. Characteristically, the top of this central knot reaches into the zone of the cornice. On the left side, bunches of fruit and flowers are attached to a drapery swag, which is drawn across to the right halfway down while the drop hangs vertically alongside the picture frame. On the right, foliate masses hang with two winged putti heads to a ribbon pinned to a nail in the top right-hand corner and hung across from the central knot, where fronds spray out, left and right. This drop is brought round the bottom of the frame as a swag and hangs from its centre above a crown flanked by a cherub's head. In this right half of the design an oval panel is proposed for the deep frieze above the fire surround, and to its right are further swags and whorls of foliage. The left side of the design in this zone presents a simple rectangular frame.

Literature

Esterly, Gibbons, 1998, p. 105, fig. 79; Wren Society, IV, pl. 33, top

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

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).