Lot Essay
LORD BURLINGTON, 'APOLLO OF THE ARTS'
These colourful 'Roman' marble slabs are supported by golden sea-nymph 'nereids' that recall the 'Triumph of Venus', and were conceived about 1730 by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, that 'Apollo of the Arts' and 'Modern Vitruvius' of King George II's reign. These sideboard-tables, conceived as antique sarcophagi, formed the focal point of the Saloon or Gallery of his Roman villa at Chiswick, near London. This tribuna-ended gallery, presided over by ancient deities and overlooking a Roman amphitheatre set in an Arcadian Thames-side garden, adjoined a banqueting-hall and formed the heart of the villa that he added to his family mansion. First publicised by Burlington in William Kent's The Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones..with some Additional Designs [by Burlington and Kent] of 1727, Chiswick was extolled as the villa par excellence and 'the icon of English Palladian architecture'.
WILLIAM KENT AND 'THE ODYSSEY'
These tables formed an integral part of the villa's decoration and their ornament is likewise indebted to the work of the celebrated architect Inigo Jones (d.1652), Surveyor of King James I's Board of Works. A prime source for their antique form appears to be a design by Inigo Jones for a sarcophagus-shaped monument embellished with winged nymph chimerae framing a cherubim-mask (illustrated in J.Harris, Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court, London, 1973, fig.34). A further source was Jones's fountain design for Somerset House, London, which also featured in Jones's collection of drawings by Andrea Palladio. In turn, Jones's design can be seen as influencing William Kent's engraving of a 'Venus' fountain that he included in his illustrations for Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey (1725), recounting the history of Rome's foundation after the Trojan Wars. Kent's fountain and another vignette of a marble-topped 'Roman' sideboard or buffet were certainly inspirational to the Burlington tables.
It was the artist William Kent, lodged at Burlington's London house following his return in 1719 from a ten-year study of painting and antique decoration in Rome, who acted as the 'proper priest' to Burlington's 'Apollo'. Burlington encouraged him to broaden his horizons to include Architecture, of which furniture and garden-planning were branches, and it was through Burlington's patronage that Kent was appointed 'Master Carpenter' to King George II's Board of Works. However, his first Court commissions, executed for King George I had included decorative schemes for Kensington Palace, where the ceiling of the King's Gallery was also inspired by his work for Pope's translation of the Odyssey. In the same year that the Odyssey was published, Kent was to propose a 'nereid' sideboard-table to accompany the 'Apollo' ceiling in the Saloon at Houghton, Norfolk, which he executed for Sir Robert Walpole (d.1745). The Walpole table, like the Burlington tables, was intended to recall Ovid's Metamorphoses celebrating Love's triumph, and would have stood beneath a ceiling-cove where Venus, the Nature Goddess and Goddess of Love, was seated in her shell-chariot attended by Neptune and his tritons. These half-men/half-fish were the chimerical creations of ancient poets and like their nereid companions, who symbolised sea-waves, formed the retinue of the water deity Neptune.
THE ROMAN BUFFET
Burlington's sideboard-tables, which served to dispense wine and water, have ribbon-scrolled frames appropriately hung with festive triton-masks accompanied by love-winged nereids wearing Venus pearls. Conceived as guardian herm-posts or caryatids, their serpentined trusses are antique-fluted, wrapped in the Ionic manner with Roman acanthus and husks and terminated by bifurcated volutes. Trophies of Venus-shells, ribbon-tied to their plinths, serve as carriage-supports for youths, who festoon the triton-masks with garlands of Jupiter's sacred oak, emblematic of hospitality.
THE 'MOSAIC' SLABS'
Their Italian 'jewelled' slabs of pure white statuary marble are richly inlaid with a multi-coloured mosaic of Egyptian porphyry and rare marbles in pietra dura in the manner of a Roman pavement and display Apollo-sunbursts and octagon compartments within a ribboned border of golden Siena in a Grecian key-fret pattern. These slabs almost certainly formed part of the objets de vertu assembled by Burlington on the Grand Tour. Although documentary evidence is scarce, five table tops are known to have been unpacked from his 1719 Grand Tour and it is interesting to note, therefore, that the two Kentian pier tables in the form of capitals, supplied for the Bedchamber at Chiswick, surmounted by golden Siena marble slabs. The Gallery's mosaic table tops may well be those acquired in Genoa in 1719 to which he referred in a letter to Sir Andrew Fountaine of 6 November, in which he bemoaned that as things were 'scarce', all he had been able to buy were 'some tables at Genova' and 'some drawings of Palladio at Venice'.
They would certainly have been appropriate companions for the magnificient wine-krater vases of Egyptian porphyry that he had acquired in Rome on the 4th February 1715 . These 'porphy vases' were also placed in the Gallery and are discussed by J. Dodsley in London and its Environs Described, London, 1761, II. Their richly polychromed surface also proved appropriately exotic for the display of Burlington's family plate, comprising such items as fountain vases, wine-flasks, ewers and basins.
While Kent designed mirrored wall-sconces with candlebranches to light Walpole's plate at Houghton, the Burlington tables were accompanied by shell-crested mirrors.
THE GALLERY
These tables are an essential element of Chiswick's architecture and stood in the Gallery on the piano nobile, based upon Palladio's reconstruction of Roman Baths, facing the Venetian window that provided a triumphal-arched entrance to the garden. They flanked the door to the banqueting hall, whose laurel-enriched and truss-supported entablature was surmounted by an antique marble bust within a Roman temple pediment. This octagonal hall, with coffered dome incorporating Roman-arched windows, was wreathed, like the tables, with oak garlands. The latter festooned lion-masks, sacred to the wine-god Bacchus, while libation-paterae recalled Ceres, the kindly harvest-goddess. According to Virgil and the ancient poets, these deities represented the presence of love, and recalled that 'Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus', or 'without food and wine love grows cold'. Indeed, Palladio had advised that such a hall was intended 'for feasts entertainment and decorations, for comedies, weddings and such like recreations'.
Appropriately, a statue of Venus was amongst those displayed in the Palladian gallery and inhabited one of the apses, whose flower-coffered cove was inspired by the Temple of Venus in Rome. She was accompanied by Mercury, who assisted with the education of her son Cupid, and formed part of the set of four statues displayed in wall-niches, where they guarded the entrances to conjoining tribunes. The gallery ceiling displayed a central medallion of an ancient battle-scene, and this was framed with arabesque panels, painted after the antique manner that Kent had learnt in Rome, uniting small 'battle' tablets with trophies of fruit-filled cornucopiae. It was such symbols of 'Peace and Plenty' that recalled the concept 'when arms and armour are laid aside then agriculture flourishes'.
'BURLINGTON ARCHITECTUS'
These tables are integral to Burlington's unified scheme of decoration at Chiswick, demonstrating his role as a supporter of the 'Liberal Art of Architecture'. Indeed it was in this role that he was portrayed in 1718, holding a set of compasses beside the garden Casina that had been his first essay in architecture at Chiswick and served as his Office of Works during the planning of his 'Rotunda' banqueting villa. It was at this temple Casina that he originally displayed statues of the sixteenth century Italian architect Andrea Palladio alongside Inigo Jones (d.1652), who introduced the true Roman style of architecture to England and followed Palladio in the steps of Vitruvius. It was their work that provided Burlington with such a rich quarry for the embellishment of his villa.
Another portrait revealed Burlington holding his book of 'The Designs of Mr Inigo Jones...' alongside a bust of the architect. One of the designs, intended for this publication and prepared by the architect Henry Flitcroft (d.1769), dubbed 'Burlington Harry', showed a proposal for stuccoed decoration for the gallery. This was to include a frieze of youths with garlands draped from hermed corner-posts, somewhat in the manner of the banqueting hall at Houghton. However, Burlington hung the room with paintings brought from his London house and the figures were adapted instead to the table-frames. Although the table's design no longer survives, their voluted form relates to that of Lady Burlington's 'Savile owl' candlesticks, later illustrated in John Vardy's Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent, 1744.
Although it is Kent who has received the credit for the design of a pair of Cupid-hermed gueridons or giltwood pedestals for candelabra or flower-vases paid for by Lady Burlington in 1735, it was Burlington who led the movement to promote the 'Arts and Architecture of Ancient Rome'. Recognised as a worthy successor to Vitruvius, he too is entitled to share the laurels with Kent for the design of these tables.
BOSON AND GUELFI
Lady Burlington's cupid-herm pedestals were executed by John Boson (d.1743) specialist carver to Frederick, Prince of Wales (d.1752). Described by Vertue as 'a man of great ingenuity' who 'undertook great works in his way in the world', Boson enjoyed Burlington's patronage and indeed built his own house in Savile Row, London on land leased from the Earl. It is likely that Boson was commissioned to supply these tables, as he is first recorded as carving at Chiswick as early as 10 July 1728, when he was paid £688 25 'for Carving in Stone at the Capitals' in the very same Gallery. Although the account books relating to the years 1729-31 are sadly missing, Andrew Crotty's comment of 10 April 1731 that the Earl and Countess 'According to custom go to Chiswick tomorrow where new Improvements are growing every day', certainly suggests numerous additions to the interior furnishings (R.T. Spence, 'Chiswick House and Its Gardens, 1726-32', The Burlington Magazine, August, 1993, p.525). This theory is confirmed by the enormous payment to Boson, conceivably relating to these tables of £100 on 10 April 1732 from Gould and Ferrett. It is extremely pertinent, therefore, that Mark Anthony Haudoroy charged Burlington the equally large sum of £17 in January 1732 for 'gilding two frames' - probably either these tables or the mirrors that stood above them. However, their robust Roman Baroque character and sculptured construction may well betray the involvement of the Rome-trained sculptor Giovanni Battista Guelfi (fl. 1714-34), whom Burlington encountered on the Grand Tour. A member of Burlington's retinue at his Piccadilly house, Guelfi was paid £55 16s 'for Completion of his Statuary work' on 27 October 1731 - relating to the figures of Venus and Mercury that were placed in the Greek-key niches of the Gallery at Chiswick. Moreover, Guelfi and Boson are known to have collaborated on a monument of circa 1730 to Anne, Duchess of Richmond at Deene Church, Northamptonshire. So it would seem that a number of talents combined to produce these splendid tables, that were intended for the display of gold and silver plate celebrating Lord and Lady Burlington's marriage and providing a welcome to visitors at Chiswick.
THE CHISWICK INVENTORIES
These princely tables are recorded in the Gallery at Chiswick House in four separate inventories, now in the Devonshire Archives at Chatsworth. The first, an 'Inventory of the Gouds and Chattels at Chiswick House, 10 June 1770' lists them in 'No.27 The Gallery fronting the Garden' as:
The contents of the room was valued at £210 3s Od'. In the 'Inventory of the Gouds and Chattels at Chiswick House...1863', they are likewise described as: '2 carved and gilt console tables with white marble inlaid tops'. and this same description appears in the 'Inventory of the Goods and Chattels at Chiswick House...1869'- '2 carved and gilt console tables with white marble inlaid top....'. Finally, the 'Inventory of the Furniture, Books, Pictures, Statuary and other effects at Chiswick House, late the Property of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire deceased. Taken for the purpose of Probate John G. Crace Hon, 38 Wigmore St. London', of April 1892 records: '2 carved & gilt console tables, with white marble inlaid tops'.
The fact that these tables do not feature in the 'Inventory & Valuation of Furniture and Effects. Also receipted settlement 15 July 1892, Herbert J. Fuller, 15 Sergeants Lane, E.C.' confirms that they were acquired by John Patrick, 3rd Marquess of Bute, following his departure from Chiswick in January 1891 for his new house, St. John's Lodge, London, between April and July 1892 .
THE GILDING
The decoration of these tables has been tested by University College London. This has revealed several layers of decoration: the original finish is gold leaf over a red iron oxide and yellow bole; this has a comtemporary coat of oil varnish, probably copal; another coat of varnish was applied after a period of time as there is dirt deposited and this varnish is of natural resin, also probably copal; the table was subsequently regilded using a yellow bole and gold leaf. After sufficient time for a heavy dirt layer to accumulate, they were again regilded and a shellac coating was applied, which is pigmented with particles of chrome yellow, which was invented in 1818. The present decorative finish must, therefore, date from the late 19th Century.
This footnote is based on an article by John Harris and John Hardy in the Christie's International Magazine, July, 1996.
These colourful 'Roman' marble slabs are supported by golden sea-nymph 'nereids' that recall the 'Triumph of Venus', and were conceived about 1730 by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, that 'Apollo of the Arts' and 'Modern Vitruvius' of King George II's reign. These sideboard-tables, conceived as antique sarcophagi, formed the focal point of the Saloon or Gallery of his Roman villa at Chiswick, near London. This tribuna-ended gallery, presided over by ancient deities and overlooking a Roman amphitheatre set in an Arcadian Thames-side garden, adjoined a banqueting-hall and formed the heart of the villa that he added to his family mansion. First publicised by Burlington in William Kent's The Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones..with some Additional Designs [by Burlington and Kent] of 1727, Chiswick was extolled as the villa par excellence and 'the icon of English Palladian architecture'.
WILLIAM KENT AND 'THE ODYSSEY'
These tables formed an integral part of the villa's decoration and their ornament is likewise indebted to the work of the celebrated architect Inigo Jones (d.1652), Surveyor of King James I's Board of Works. A prime source for their antique form appears to be a design by Inigo Jones for a sarcophagus-shaped monument embellished with winged nymph chimerae framing a cherubim-mask (illustrated in J.Harris, Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court, London, 1973, fig.34). A further source was Jones's fountain design for Somerset House, London, which also featured in Jones's collection of drawings by Andrea Palladio. In turn, Jones's design can be seen as influencing William Kent's engraving of a 'Venus' fountain that he included in his illustrations for Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey (1725), recounting the history of Rome's foundation after the Trojan Wars. Kent's fountain and another vignette of a marble-topped 'Roman' sideboard or buffet were certainly inspirational to the Burlington tables.
It was the artist William Kent, lodged at Burlington's London house following his return in 1719 from a ten-year study of painting and antique decoration in Rome, who acted as the 'proper priest' to Burlington's 'Apollo'. Burlington encouraged him to broaden his horizons to include Architecture, of which furniture and garden-planning were branches, and it was through Burlington's patronage that Kent was appointed 'Master Carpenter' to King George II's Board of Works. However, his first Court commissions, executed for King George I had included decorative schemes for Kensington Palace, where the ceiling of the King's Gallery was also inspired by his work for Pope's translation of the Odyssey. In the same year that the Odyssey was published, Kent was to propose a 'nereid' sideboard-table to accompany the 'Apollo' ceiling in the Saloon at Houghton, Norfolk, which he executed for Sir Robert Walpole (d.1745). The Walpole table, like the Burlington tables, was intended to recall Ovid's Metamorphoses celebrating Love's triumph, and would have stood beneath a ceiling-cove where Venus, the Nature Goddess and Goddess of Love, was seated in her shell-chariot attended by Neptune and his tritons. These half-men/half-fish were the chimerical creations of ancient poets and like their nereid companions, who symbolised sea-waves, formed the retinue of the water deity Neptune.
THE ROMAN BUFFET
Burlington's sideboard-tables, which served to dispense wine and water, have ribbon-scrolled frames appropriately hung with festive triton-masks accompanied by love-winged nereids wearing Venus pearls. Conceived as guardian herm-posts or caryatids, their serpentined trusses are antique-fluted, wrapped in the Ionic manner with Roman acanthus and husks and terminated by bifurcated volutes. Trophies of Venus-shells, ribbon-tied to their plinths, serve as carriage-supports for youths, who festoon the triton-masks with garlands of Jupiter's sacred oak, emblematic of hospitality.
THE 'MOSAIC' SLABS'
Their Italian 'jewelled' slabs of pure white statuary marble are richly inlaid with a multi-coloured mosaic of Egyptian porphyry and rare marbles in pietra dura in the manner of a Roman pavement and display Apollo-sunbursts and octagon compartments within a ribboned border of golden Siena in a Grecian key-fret pattern. These slabs almost certainly formed part of the objets de vertu assembled by Burlington on the Grand Tour. Although documentary evidence is scarce, five table tops are known to have been unpacked from his 1719 Grand Tour and it is interesting to note, therefore, that the two Kentian pier tables in the form of capitals, supplied for the Bedchamber at Chiswick, surmounted by golden Siena marble slabs. The Gallery's mosaic table tops may well be those acquired in Genoa in 1719 to which he referred in a letter to Sir Andrew Fountaine of 6 November, in which he bemoaned that as things were 'scarce', all he had been able to buy were 'some tables at Genova' and 'some drawings of Palladio at Venice'.
They would certainly have been appropriate companions for the magnificient wine-krater vases of Egyptian porphyry that he had acquired in Rome on the 4th February 1715 . These 'porphy vases' were also placed in the Gallery and are discussed by J. Dodsley in London and its Environs Described, London, 1761, II. Their richly polychromed surface also proved appropriately exotic for the display of Burlington's family plate, comprising such items as fountain vases, wine-flasks, ewers and basins.
While Kent designed mirrored wall-sconces with candlebranches to light Walpole's plate at Houghton, the Burlington tables were accompanied by shell-crested mirrors.
THE GALLERY
These tables are an essential element of Chiswick's architecture and stood in the Gallery on the piano nobile, based upon Palladio's reconstruction of Roman Baths, facing the Venetian window that provided a triumphal-arched entrance to the garden. They flanked the door to the banqueting hall, whose laurel-enriched and truss-supported entablature was surmounted by an antique marble bust within a Roman temple pediment. This octagonal hall, with coffered dome incorporating Roman-arched windows, was wreathed, like the tables, with oak garlands. The latter festooned lion-masks, sacred to the wine-god Bacchus, while libation-paterae recalled Ceres, the kindly harvest-goddess. According to Virgil and the ancient poets, these deities represented the presence of love, and recalled that 'Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus', or 'without food and wine love grows cold'. Indeed, Palladio had advised that such a hall was intended 'for feasts entertainment and decorations, for comedies, weddings and such like recreations'.
Appropriately, a statue of Venus was amongst those displayed in the Palladian gallery and inhabited one of the apses, whose flower-coffered cove was inspired by the Temple of Venus in Rome. She was accompanied by Mercury, who assisted with the education of her son Cupid, and formed part of the set of four statues displayed in wall-niches, where they guarded the entrances to conjoining tribunes. The gallery ceiling displayed a central medallion of an ancient battle-scene, and this was framed with arabesque panels, painted after the antique manner that Kent had learnt in Rome, uniting small 'battle' tablets with trophies of fruit-filled cornucopiae. It was such symbols of 'Peace and Plenty' that recalled the concept 'when arms and armour are laid aside then agriculture flourishes'.
'BURLINGTON ARCHITECTUS'
These tables are integral to Burlington's unified scheme of decoration at Chiswick, demonstrating his role as a supporter of the 'Liberal Art of Architecture'. Indeed it was in this role that he was portrayed in 1718, holding a set of compasses beside the garden Casina that had been his first essay in architecture at Chiswick and served as his Office of Works during the planning of his 'Rotunda' banqueting villa. It was at this temple Casina that he originally displayed statues of the sixteenth century Italian architect Andrea Palladio alongside Inigo Jones (d.1652), who introduced the true Roman style of architecture to England and followed Palladio in the steps of Vitruvius. It was their work that provided Burlington with such a rich quarry for the embellishment of his villa.
Another portrait revealed Burlington holding his book of 'The Designs of Mr Inigo Jones...' alongside a bust of the architect. One of the designs, intended for this publication and prepared by the architect Henry Flitcroft (d.1769), dubbed 'Burlington Harry', showed a proposal for stuccoed decoration for the gallery. This was to include a frieze of youths with garlands draped from hermed corner-posts, somewhat in the manner of the banqueting hall at Houghton. However, Burlington hung the room with paintings brought from his London house and the figures were adapted instead to the table-frames. Although the table's design no longer survives, their voluted form relates to that of Lady Burlington's 'Savile owl' candlesticks, later illustrated in John Vardy's Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent, 1744.
Although it is Kent who has received the credit for the design of a pair of Cupid-hermed gueridons or giltwood pedestals for candelabra or flower-vases paid for by Lady Burlington in 1735, it was Burlington who led the movement to promote the 'Arts and Architecture of Ancient Rome'. Recognised as a worthy successor to Vitruvius, he too is entitled to share the laurels with Kent for the design of these tables.
BOSON AND GUELFI
Lady Burlington's cupid-herm pedestals were executed by John Boson (d.1743) specialist carver to Frederick, Prince of Wales (d.1752). Described by Vertue as 'a man of great ingenuity' who 'undertook great works in his way in the world', Boson enjoyed Burlington's patronage and indeed built his own house in Savile Row, London on land leased from the Earl. It is likely that Boson was commissioned to supply these tables, as he is first recorded as carving at Chiswick as early as 10 July 1728, when he was paid £688 25 'for Carving in Stone at the Capitals' in the very same Gallery. Although the account books relating to the years 1729-31 are sadly missing, Andrew Crotty's comment of 10 April 1731 that the Earl and Countess 'According to custom go to Chiswick tomorrow where new Improvements are growing every day', certainly suggests numerous additions to the interior furnishings (R.T. Spence, 'Chiswick House and Its Gardens, 1726-32', The Burlington Magazine, August, 1993, p.525). This theory is confirmed by the enormous payment to Boson, conceivably relating to these tables of £100 on 10 April 1732 from Gould and Ferrett. It is extremely pertinent, therefore, that Mark Anthony Haudoroy charged Burlington the equally large sum of £17 in January 1732 for 'gilding two frames' - probably either these tables or the mirrors that stood above them. However, their robust Roman Baroque character and sculptured construction may well betray the involvement of the Rome-trained sculptor Giovanni Battista Guelfi (fl. 1714-34), whom Burlington encountered on the Grand Tour. A member of Burlington's retinue at his Piccadilly house, Guelfi was paid £55 16s 'for Completion of his Statuary work' on 27 October 1731 - relating to the figures of Venus and Mercury that were placed in the Greek-key niches of the Gallery at Chiswick. Moreover, Guelfi and Boson are known to have collaborated on a monument of circa 1730 to Anne, Duchess of Richmond at Deene Church, Northamptonshire. So it would seem that a number of talents combined to produce these splendid tables, that were intended for the display of gold and silver plate celebrating Lord and Lady Burlington's marriage and providing a welcome to visitors at Chiswick.
THE CHISWICK INVENTORIES
These princely tables are recorded in the Gallery at Chiswick House in four separate inventories, now in the Devonshire Archives at Chatsworth. The first, an 'Inventory of the Gouds and Chattels at Chiswick House, 10 June 1770' lists them in 'No.27 The Gallery fronting the Garden' as:
The contents of the room was valued at £210 3s Od'. In the 'Inventory of the Gouds and Chattels at Chiswick House...1863', they are likewise described as: '2 carved and gilt console tables with white marble inlaid tops'. and this same description appears in the 'Inventory of the Goods and Chattels at Chiswick House...1869'- '2 carved and gilt console tables with white marble inlaid top....'. Finally, the 'Inventory of the Furniture, Books, Pictures, Statuary and other effects at Chiswick House, late the Property of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire deceased. Taken for the purpose of Probate John G. Crace Hon, 38 Wigmore St. London', of April 1892 records: '2 carved & gilt console tables, with white marble inlaid tops'.
The fact that these tables do not feature in the 'Inventory & Valuation of Furniture and Effects. Also receipted settlement 15 July 1892, Herbert J. Fuller, 15 Sergeants Lane, E.C.' confirms that they were acquired by John Patrick, 3rd Marquess of Bute, following his departure from Chiswick in January 1891 for his new house, St. John's Lodge, London, between April and July 1892 .
THE GILDING
The decoration of these tables has been tested by University College London. This has revealed several layers of decoration: the original finish is gold leaf over a red iron oxide and yellow bole; this has a comtemporary coat of oil varnish, probably copal; another coat of varnish was applied after a period of time as there is dirt deposited and this varnish is of natural resin, also probably copal; the table was subsequently regilded using a yellow bole and gold leaf. After sufficient time for a heavy dirt layer to accumulate, they were again regilded and a shellac coating was applied, which is pigmented with particles of chrome yellow, which was invented in 1818. The present decorative finish must, therefore, date from the late 19th Century.
This footnote is based on an article by John Harris and John Hardy in the Christie's International Magazine, July, 1996.