The Music Room chimneypiece
Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792)
Category
Architecture / Features & Decoration
Date
circa 1760 - 1765
Materials
Marble and Blue John
Measurements
1600 x 2260 x 240 mm
Place of origin
Great Britain
Order this imageCollection
Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire
NT 107920.1
Summary
Marble and Blue John, the Music Room chimneypiece, designed by Robert Adam (1728-92), with bas-relief panel after the antique attributed to Michael Henry Spang (d. 1762), c. 1760-65. The chimneypiece of white marble inlaid with Derbyshire Blue John panels. A moulded breakfront shelf with acanthus and egg and dart cornice motif. The frieze with a centralised rectangular bas-relief panel depicting an epithalamium, after an engraving by Pietro Santi Bartoli (1635-1700) published in the Admiranda Romanarum (1693). An epithalamium is a poem read or sung to music to a bride or on her way to the marital chamber or to a bride and groom the morning after their wedding. The verses contained invocations of blessing and predictions of nuptial happiness. In Spang's panel after Bartoli, the bride and groom sit at opposite sides of a group of musicians. The seated woman at centre plays a lyre and delivers the epithalamium from a book on her lap. The frieze flanked by rosette paterae; the panel flanked by bas-reliefs showing a bow and quiver surrounded by a wreath at left, and, at right, a classical Greek lyre with olive branch. The jambs carved of white marble and rendered as fluted ionic columns, on blocks. The Music Room was designed by Robert Adam c. 1760-65 (see NT 109430 for original designs).
Full description
The sculptor Michael Henry Spang was a native of Denmark and was first recorded in England in 1758 after modeling a seal for the Royal Society of Arts. A receipt in the Kedleston Archive from James 'Athenian' Stuart (1713-88) marked 'London August 9 1758' shows that Spang was subcontracted by Stuart to carve four figures in wood (NT 108997) for the sum of £28 (around £2,800 in today's money). Spang was later commissioned to produce the Dining Room, Drawing Room and Music Room chimneypieces for Kedleston, for which he was paid £990 (see NT 107982 and NT 107932). There are three designs by Spang for a ceiling, a bridge and a pavilion for Kedleston (NT 109248, 109249, 109499), a drawing of a mournful Sigismunda (NT 108920), and a miniature wax seal of the Scarsale coat of arms (NT 109110). Spang also acquired for Curzon a model of a British warship (NT 109114). The design for the bas-relief is taken from plate 62 in the Admiranda Romanarum, a book of engravings by Pietro Santi Bartoli (1635-1700) depicting antique sculpture in Roman museums and collections. Nathaniel Curzon's personal copy of the Admiranda Romanarum can be found in the Kedleston Library (NT 3042399). Blue John is a rare semi-precious fluorite which crystalises in bands of purple, blue and yellow. Its distinctive colouring and light-reflecting qualities made it a highly-prized commodity in the late 18th and 19th centuries, especially as its only known source in the United Kingdom is Derbyshire. Mined from two caverns near Castleton and the now abandoned Old Tor Mine on Winnats Pass, one of the earliest recorded decorative uses of Blue John was in the chimneypieces at Kedleston Hall (see also the State Bedchamber chimneypiece, NT 107960). The Blue John at Kedleston was obtained from Castleton via the Derby marble masons Richard Brown & Sons (Ford 2000, p. 56). Brown is attributed to a pair of Blue John obelisks in the Family Corridor (NT 109102). Alice Rylance-Watson 2019
Provenance
Purchased by Nathaniel Curzon (1726-1804) c. 1760-65 as part of Robert Adam's remodelling of Kedleston; identifiable in 'Catalogue of the pictures, statues, &c. at Kedleston' (1769) as 'Chimney-piece, Statuary Marble. Tablet, an Epithalamium, from the Adm. Rom., in basso-relievo' (Music Room, p. 10); purchased with part of the contents of Kedleston with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund in 1987 when the house and park were given to the National Trust by Francis Curzon, 3rd Viscount Scarsdale (1924-2000).
Credit line
Kedleston Hall, The Scarsdale Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1987)
Makers and roles
Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792), architect attributed to Michael Henry Spang (fl.c.1750 - d.London 1762), sculptor Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792), designer