Design for Overmantel with Floral Motifs
Creator(s): Grinling Gibbons 1648-1721
Date: Undated, but datable 1689-94
Accession Number: SM 110/31
Dimensions: 455mm x 294mm
Materials: Pen and brown ink with pink, yellow ochre, grey-yellow and grey washes over graphite under-drawing, with some graphite detail and parallel line shading over the wash; 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/OBJECT263
NOTES ON THE ARTWORK
This design for an overmantel with floral motifs may for the upper part of a corner chimney breast. Locations would include the queen’s closets and bedrooms at the south end of the east park front range, and the smaller rooms of the east range, facing the Fountain Court (see Geraghty 2007, Nos 209-211; AS, I.144, I.27 and I.104, where at least eight corner chimney pieces are shown on three study plans datable c. 1689-91). Gibbons has imposed his pen and wash design on a faint pencil sketch for a smaller chimney-piece, with a smaller and lower fire surround. He then concentrated on the overmantel, and in the process carried his cresting over the area originally intended for the cornice of the chimney-piece. The elaborate framing motif probably has a source in the engravings of Jean Marot or Pierre Lepautre. It consists of several linked panels of simulated leather relief, marked with stippled, fish-scale and ruled line texturing, and framed by scalloped, scrolled and intertwined ribbons, forming overlapping planes, and bordered by drops and sprays of fruit and flowers.
Literature: Wren Society, IV, pl. 28, top.
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation.
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Design for Overmantel with Floral Motifs © Sir John Soane's Museum
