Carving from an Overmantel
Grinling Gibbons (British, 1648–1721)
c. 1675–1677
Medium
lindenwood
Classification
Sculpture
Department
European Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Grace Rainey Rogers Fund
Accession Number
1943.654.l
Tags
male
About this artwork
The arrangement of architectural elements within grand interior spaces in the late 1600s and early 1700s emphasized symmetry and height. Decorative elements such as elaborately carved mantels, mirrors, paintings, and applied wall decorations were often stacked to achieve a visual focal point at one or both ends of the room. This particular overmantel decoration once hung above the fireplace in the Green Drawing Room of the Earl of Essex at Cassiobury in Watford, near London. In 1823, the British...