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| Various marbles in the Dome Room |
Continuing my tour of Chatsworth House, to look at its decorative stones, I then entered the Dome Room, which marks the start of the North Wing, built by Sir Jeffry Wyatville - 1820 to 1842.
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| A C19 cast of Mercury by Giambologna |
The influence of William Cavendish’s trips to Italy, and his love of sculpture and stone, is immediately apparent in the C19 cast of Mercury by Giambologna, with a pedestal of yellow and pink marble that looks like the giallo antico marble seen in the North Corridor and Chapel Passage. Looking closely, the plinth is Derbyshire crinoidal marble from the Chatsworth Estate.
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| Pavonazetto and 'oriental alabaster' columns |
The large moulded door surrounds and wall panels are made with grey veined white marble from the Apuan Alps, and on each side of the room are a pair of supporting marble columns, which Pevsner identifies as “pavonazza and gialastro”.
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| A detail of an 'oriental alabaster' column |
Referring to The Geology of Chatsworth House, these are described as being pavonazetto, a brecciated marble from Turkey containing white clasts in a red-purple matrix and ‘oriental alabaster’, which is a banded calcite deposited in hot springs and probably Italian.
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| A detail of a pavonazetto marble column |
On either side of the doorway to the Great Dining Room, there are large vases in rare peach coloured occhio di pavone bigio marble, a late Cretaceous shelly limestone from Turkey, which are set on grey granite pedestals of unknown provenance.
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| A detail of an 'oriental alabaster' column |
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