Design for Chimney-Piece with Vase and Flowers
Creator(s): Grinling Gibbons 1648-1721
Date: Undated, but datable 1689-94
Accession Number: SM 110/40
Dimensions: 401mm x 220mm
Materials: Pen and russet-brown ink over graphite under drawing, with pink, yellow, green-grey and grey washes, and additions in graphite; and with black ink re-drawing of outlines at base 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/OBJECT275
NOTES ON THE ARTWORK
The design for a chimney-piece with a vase and flowers presents two slightly varied alternatives, left and right. The right side is incomplete from the pencilled urn downwards and several aspects are unresolved. The overmantel wall and fire surround on the left side are slightly wider than on the right. The left-hand scheme gives background wall behind the vase on the mantel shelf, and results in a different arrangement for the supporting motifs below the shelf. Gibbons has drawn alternatives, left and right, for the widths of the projecting parts of the mantel shelf beneath the urns. The finished left side of the design has the pedestal stepping forward once from the centre to a narrow supporting pedestal, which is supported by two winged cherubs’ heads at the top of the pilaster of the fire surround. This pedestal has an acanthus flower motif on its dado panel and enrichments on its basement and cornice mouldings. On the right side he drew a single wide pedestal aligned with the right side of the fire opening and the vertical of the chimney breast. Its end mouldings would have projected beyond that wall of the chimney-breast and perhaps for this reason are not drawn in. This solution would have been less satisfactory as the vase would not have been centred on the pedestal. However, the left side is not fully resolved as the pedestal is set slightly to the right of the pilaster and the vase is to the right again.
As in almost all the other designs from this group, Gibbons has drawn a full cornice at the top of the chimney-piece bay and proportioned it to suit the design rather than any fixed measure. In this case it is relatively large, and the chimney-piece bay is quite low (perhaps no more than 12 feet).
Literature: D. Esterly, Gibbons, 1998, p. 82 and fig 59; Wren Society, IV, pl. 36, 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 Flowers © Sir John Soane's Museum
