Design for Chimney-Piece with Vase and Doves
Creator(s): Grinling Gibbons 1648-1721
Date: Undated, but datable 1689-94
Accession Number: SM 110/44
Dimensions: 438mm x 225mm
Materials: 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
Location: Sir John Soane's Museum
Credit Line (copyright notice for material) : © Sir John Soane's Museum
Online Catalogue Entry : http://collections.soane.org/OBJECT286
NOTES ON THE ARTWORK
This design for a chimney-piece with a vase and doves is 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.
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation.
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Design for Chimney-Piece with Vase and Doves © Sir John Soane's Museum
