Design for Chimney-Piece with Cherub
Creator(s): Grinling Gibbons 1648-1721
Date: Undated, but datable 1689-94
Accession Number: SM 110/52
Dimensions: 388mm x 230mm
Materials: Pen and brown ink over graphite under-drawing, with yellow ochre, green-yellow, pink, blue and grey washes; later black ink redrawing of baseline 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/OBJECT294
Design for Chimney-Piece with Cherub © Sir John Soane's Museum
NOTES ON THE ARTWORK
This design for a chimney-piece with a cherub is one of Gibbons’s most elegant compositions. The fire surround would have been in carved stone or marble and the cherub probably in limewood; the glass or porcelain vases would have been real examples and the drapery would probably have been trompe l’oeil carving, again in limewood. The baroque recorder in the trophy is accurately drawn, with the correct number of fingerholes and the bottom one properly displaced.
Literature: Wren Society, IV, pl. 40.
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: [email protected]
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Design for Chimney-Piece with Cherub © Sir John Soane's Museum
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