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| A general view of the Sculpture Gallery |
The end of my tour of Chatsworth House finally came at the Sculpture Gallery, which William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire built to house a collection of modern sculpture that he had acquired over the years.
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| A view north along the Sculpture Gallery |
At this point, having encountered a wide variety of marbles and decorative stones during the 2 hours that I had been exploring it, I just “switched off” and then wandered around to marvel at the wide variety of colours and textures and take a set of general photographs.
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| A view south along the Sculpture Gallery |
I didn’t stop to closely examine any of the stones in various pedestals and plinths and, not having my headset on to guide me around the gallery, I don’t know much about the sculptures either - except that the 6th Duke formed a friendship with the Italian Neoclassical sculptor, Antonio Canova, and much of his work is seen here.
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| Cipollino verde marble |
Another artist the Duke admired was Bertel Thorvaldsen, who sculpted Venus with the apple - with a pedestal in cipollino verde marble - and the bas reliefs on the east wall of the gallery, among other work in the gallery.
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| Various marbles |
The sculptures are all of the purest white Italian marble, presumably from Carrara, but the plinths and pedestals and various other freestanding objects are made out of a wide variety of marbles that – with the Duke’s connections to dealers in rare stones in Rome - have probably been sourced from countries that were once within the boundaries of the Roman Empire.
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| The Sleeping Endymion by Antonio Canova |
The plinth to the Sleeping Endymion, by Antonio Canova, looks like the africano breccia marble that I had seen in the Great Dining Room and giallo antico from Tunisia is used in columns and pedestals and verde antico from Thessaly in Greece used in panels and plinths.
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| Porfido verde antico |
Referring to the Faustino Corsi Collection online, I could also determine that a green porphyry, porfido verde antico from Laconia in Greece, occurs as a sphere in the centre of a large tazza made of Belgian Rouge Royal marble.
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| A Rouge Royal marble tazza |
There are very many other marbles, granites, serpentinites and porphyries that I did not look at very closely, including geometric inlaid work to various plinths, and I would need to refer to documentation that may be held at Chatsworth before I could make comment on these.
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| Various marbles |
When writing his extended entry for Chatsworth House in the Derbyshire volume of the Buildings of England, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner notes that “It was a regally expensive job throughout”.
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| Various marbles |
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