John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter
John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter, known as Lord Burghley until 1678, was a British peer and Member of Parliament. He was known as the Travelling Earl. Exeter was the son of John Cecil, 4th Earl of Exeter, Lady Frances Manners, he was educated at St John's College, Cambridge. He was elected to the House of Commons for Northamptonshire in 1675, a seat he held until 1678 when he succeeded his father in the earldom and entered the House of Lords, he was a notable Grand Tourist and filled his family home, Burghley House, with treasures purchased on his travels in Italy. Lord Exeter married Lady Anne, daughter of William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, in circa 1670, they had nine children, he died in August 1700 and was succeeded in his titles by his son John Cecil, 6th Earl of Exeter. List of deserters from James II to William of Orange Kidd, Williamson, David. Debrett's Baronetage. New York: St Martin's Press, 1990. Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages www.thepeerage.com
Grinling Gibbons
Grinling Gibbons was an English sculptor and wood carver known for his work in England, including Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral and other London churches, Petworth House and other country houses, Trinity College Oxford and Trinity College Cambridge. Gibbons was educated in Holland of English parents, his father being a merchant, he was a member of the Drapers' Company of London. He is regarded as the finest wood carver working in England, the only one whose name is known among the general public. Most of his work is in lime wood decorative Baroque garlands made up of still-life elements at about life size, made to frame mirrors and decorate the walls of churches and palaces, but he produced furniture and small relief plaques with figurative scenes, he worked in stone for churches. By the time he was established he led a large workshop, the extent to which his personal hand appears in work varies. Little is known about his early life; the name Grinling is formed from sections of two family names.
He was born in Rotterdam, it is sometimes thought that his father may have been the Englishman Samuel Gibbons, who worked under Inigo Jones, but two of his closest acquaintances, the portrait painter Thomas Murray and the diarist John Evelyn, cannot agree on how he came to be introduced to King Charles II. He moved to Deptford, England around 1667, by 1693 had accepted commissions from the royal family and had been appointed as a master carver. By 1680 he was known as the "King's Carver", carried out exquisite work for St Paul's Cathedral, Windsor Castle, the Earl of Essex's house at Cassiobury, his carving was so fine that it was said a pot of carved flowers above his house in London would tremble from the motion of passing coaches. The diarist Evelyn first discovered Gibbons' talent by chance in 1671. Evelyn, from whom Gibbons rented a cottage near Evelyn's home in Sayes Court, wrote the following: "I saw the young man at his carving, by the light of a candle. I saw him to be engaged on a carved representation of Tintoretto's "Crucifixion", which he had in a frame of his own making."
That same evening, Evelyn described what he had seen to Sir Christopher Wren. Wren and Evelyn introduced him to King Charles II who gave him his first commission – still resting in the dining room of Windsor Castle. Horace Walpole wrote about Gibbons: "There is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, chained together the various productions of the elements with the free disorder natural to each species." Gibbons is buried at Covent Garden, London. Gibbons was employed by Wren to work on St Paul's Cathedral and was appointed as master carver to George I, he was commissioned by King William III to create carvings, some of which adorn Kensington Palace today. An example of his work can be seen in the Presence Chamber above the fireplace, intended to frame a portrait of Queen Mary II after her death in 1694. In the Orangery at Kensington, you can see some his pieces. Many fine examples of his work can still be seen in the churches around London – the choir stalls and organ case of St Paul's Cathedral.
Some of the finest Gibbons carvings accessible to the general public are those on display at the National Trust's Petworth House in West Sussex, UK. At Petworth the Carved Room is host to a fine and extensive display of intricate wooden carvings by Gibbons, his association with Deptford is commemorated locally: Grinling Gibbons Primary School is in Clyde Street, near the site of Sayes Court in Deptford. Most of present-day New Cross and Brockley wards were in 1978–1998 part of the Grinling Gibbons ward, his work can be seen in the London churches of St Michael Paternoster Royal and St James, where he carved the wood reredos and marble font. The Anglican dislike of painted altarpieces left a large space on the east wall that needed filling, which gave Grinling's garlands a prominent position, as here. In 1682 King Charles II commissioned Gibbons to carve a panel as a diplomatic gift for his political ally Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany; the Cosimo Panel is an allegory of art triumphing over hatred and turmoil and includes a medallion with a low relief of Pietro da Cortona, Cosimos favourite painter.
The panel is housed in the Pitti Palace in Florence. It was displayed in the United Kingdom in the Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving exhibition held at the V&A from 22 October 1998 until 24 January 1999. In 1685 the new king James II asked Gibbons to carve a panel for another Italian ally, the Duke of Modena Francesco II, brother to his second wife Mary of Modena; the Modena Panel is a memento mori for Charles II who died earlier that year and includes a funeral dirge from the play The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses by dramatist James Shirley: "There is no armour against fate. It features a medallion self-portrait of Gibbons; the panel is displayed in the Estense Gallery in Modena. St. Peter and St. Paul church in Exton, Rutland has a fine marble tomb by Gibbons, dating from 1685, showing Viscount Campden with his fourth wife, Elizabeth Bertie, carvings of his 19 children; the famous sculptor of Brussels Peter van Dievoet had collaborated with Grinling Gibbons, but went back to Brussels after the revolution of 1688.
St Michael and All Angels Church, has a monument by Gibbons to Henry Somerset, 1st Duke of Beaufort. He was buried alongside his ancestors in the Beaufort Chapel in St George's Chapel, but the monument
Peterborough
Peterborough is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, with a population of 196,640 in 2015. Part of Northamptonshire, it is 75 miles north of London, on the River Nene which flows into the North Sea 30 miles to the north-east; the railway station is an important stop on the East Coast Main Line between Edinburgh. The city is 70 miles east of Birmingham, 38 miles east of Leicester, 81 miles south of Kingston upon Hull and 65 miles west of Norwich; the local topography is flat, in some places the land lies below sea level, for example in parts of the Fens to the east of Peterborough. Human settlement in the area began before the Bronze Age, as can be seen at the Flag Fen archaeological site to the east of the current city centre with evidence of Roman occupation; the Anglo-Saxon period saw the establishment of a monastery, which became Peterborough Cathedral. The population grew after the railways arrived in the 19th century, Peterborough became an industrial centre noted for its brick manufacture.
After the Second World War, growth was limited until designation as a New Town in the 1960s. Housing and population are expanding and a £1 billion regeneration of the city centre and surrounding area is under way; as in much of the United Kingdom, industrial employment has fallen, with a significant proportion of new jobs in financial services and distribution. EtymologyThe town's name changed to Burgh from the late tenth century after Abbot Kenulf had built a defensive wall around the abbey, developed into the form Peterborough; the contrasting form Gildenburgh is found in the 12th century history of the abbey, the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in a history of the abbey by the monk Hugh Candidus. Present-day Peterborough is the latest in a series of settlements which have at one time or other benefited from its site where the Nene leaves large areas of permanently drained land for the fens. Remains of Bronze Age settlement and what is thought to be religious activity can be seen at the Flag Fen archaeological site to the east of the city centre.
The Romans established a fortified garrison town at Durobrivae on Ermine Street, five miles to the west in Water Newton, around the middle of the 1st century AD. Durobrivae's earliest appearance among surviving records is in the Antonine Itinerary of the late 2nd century. There was a large 1st century Roman fort at Longthorpe, designed to house half a legion, or about 3,000 soldiers. Peterborough was an important area of ceramic production in the Roman period, providing Nene Valley Ware, traded as far away as Cornwall and the Antonine Wall, Caledonia. Peterborough is shown by its original name Medeshamstede to have been an Anglian settlement before AD 655, when Sexwulf founded a monastery on land granted to him for that purpose by Peada of Mercia, who converted to Christianity and was ruler of the smaller Middle Angles sub-group, his brother Wulfhere murdered his own sons converted and finished the monastery by way of atonement. Hereward the Wake rampaged through the town in 1069 or 1070. Outraged, Abbot Turold erected a fort or castle, from his name, was called Mont Turold: this mound, or hill, is on the outside of the deanery garden, now called Tout Hill, although in 1848 Tot-hill or Toot Hill.
The abbey church was rebuilt and enlarged in the 12th century. The Peterborough Chronicle, a version of the Anglo-Saxon one, contains unique information about the history of England after the Norman conquest, written here by monks in the 12th century; this is the only known prose history in English between the conquest and the 14th century. The burgesses received their first charter from "Abbot Robert" – Robert of Sutton; the place suffered materially in the war between King John and the confederate barons, many of whom took refuge in the monastery here and in Crowland Abbey, from which sanctuaries they were forced by the king's soldiers, who plundered the religious houses and carried off great treasures. The abbey church became one of Henry VIII's retained, more secular, cathedrals in 1541, having been assessed at the Dissolution as having revenue of £1,972.7s.0¾d per annum. When civil war broke out, Peterborough was divided between supporters of King Charles I and the Long Parliament; the city lay on the border of the Eastern Association of counties which sided with Parliament, the war reached Peterborough in 1643 when soldiers arrived in the city to attack Royalist strongholds at Stamford and Crowland.
The Royalist forces were defeated within a few weeks and retreated to Burghley House, where they were captured and sent to Cambridge. While the Parliamentary soldiers were in Peterborough, they ransacked the cathedral, destroying the Lady Chapel, chapter house, high altar and choir stalls, as well as mediaeval decoration and records. Housing and sanitary improvements were effected under the provisions of an Act of Parliament passed in 1790. After the dissolution the dean and chapter, who succeeded the abbot as lords of the manor, appointed a high bailiff and the constables and other borough officers were elected at their court leet. Among the privileges claimed by the abbot as early as the 13th century was that of ha
Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi or Artemisia Lomi was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when female painters were not accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence and had international clientele, she specialized in painting pictures of strong and suffering women from myths and the Bible—victims, warriors. Some of her best known themes are Susanna and the Elders and Judith Slaying Holofernes and Judith and Her Maidservant, she was known for being able to convincingly depict the female figure, anywhere between nude and clothed. Artemisia was famous for her skill and talent in handling color, both overall in the composition but in building depth; that she was a woman painting in the seventeenth century and that she was raped as a young woman by Agostino Tassi and participated in the prosecution of her rapist long overshadowed her achievements as an artist.
For many years she was regarded as a curiosity. Today she is regarded as one of the most expressive painters of her generation. Artemisia Gentileschi was born Artemisia Gentileschi Lomi in Rome on July 8, 1593, although her birth certificate from the Archivio di Stato indicated she was born in 1590, the eldest child of the Tuscan painter Orazio Gentileschi and Prudenzia di Ottaviano Montoni. Artemisia was introduced to painting in her father's workshop, showing much more talent than her brothers, who worked alongside her, she learned drawing, how to mix color, how to paint. "By 1612, when she was not yet nineteen years old, her father could boast of her extraordinary talents, claiming that in the profession of painting, which she had practiced for three years, she had no peer". Since her father's style took inspiration from Caravaggio during that period, her style was just as influenced in turn, her approach to subject matter was different from her father's, however, as her paintings are naturalistic, where Orazio's are idealized.
At the same time, Artemisia had to resist the "traditional attitude and psychological submission to this brainwashing and jealousy of her obvious talent". By doing so, she gained great recognition for her work; the first surviving work of the seventeen-year-old Artemisia was the Elders. At the time some, influenced by the prevailing misconceptions, suspected that she was helped by her father; the painting shows how Artemisia assimilated the realism of Caravaggio without being indifferent to the language of Annibale Carracci and the Bologna school. It is one of the few paintings on the theme of Susanna showing the sexual accosting by the two Elders as a traumatic event. In 1611, her father was working with Agostino Tassi to decorate the vaults of Casino delle Muse inside the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome, so Orazio hired the painter to tutor his daughter privately. During this tutelage, Tassi raped Artemisia. Another man, Cosimo Quorli, was involved. After the rape, Artemisia continued to have sexual relations with Tassi, with the expectation that they were going to be married and with the hope to restore her dignity and her future.
Tassi reneged on his promise to marry Artemisia. Nine months after the rape, when he learnt that Artemisia and Tassi were not going to be married, Orazio pressed charges against Tassi. Orazio claimed that Tassi stole a painting of Judith from the Gentileschi household; the major issue of this trial was the fact. If Artemisia had not been a virgin before Tassi raped her, the Gentileschis would not have been able to press charges. During the ensuing seven-month trial, it was discovered that Tassi had planned to murder his wife, had engaged in adultery with his sister-in-law, planned to steal some of Orazio's paintings. At the end of the trial Tassi was exiled from Rome. Artemisia was tortured with thumbscrews with the intention of verifying her testimony. Artemisia was surrounded by males since the loss of her mother at age 12; when Artemisia was 17, Orazio rented the upstairs apartment of their home to Tuzia. Artemisia befriended Tuzia; the day the rape occurred, Artemisia cried for the help of Tuzia, but Tuzia ignored Artemisia and pretended she knew nothing of what happened.
Artemisia felt betrayed by Tuzia, Tuzia's role in facilitating the rape has been compared to the role of a procuress, complicit in the sexual exploitation of a prostitute. The painting called Child is attributed to those early years; the baby has been interpreted as an indirect reference to Agostino Tassi, her rapist, as it dates to 1612, just 2 years after the rape. The painting appeared in a Swedish private collection during the 1960s, it depicts a strong and suffering woman and casts light on her anguish and expressive artistic capability. A month after the trial, Orazio arranged for his daughter to marry Pierantonio Stiattesi, a modest artist from Florence. Shortly afterward the couple moved to Florence, where Artemisia received a commission for a painting at Casa Buonarroti, she became a successful court painter, enjoying the patronage of the House of Medici and Charles I of England. It has been proposed that during this period Artemisia p
Stonemasonry
Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings and sculpture using stone as the primary material. It is one of the oldest professions in human history. Many of the long-lasting, ancient shelters, monuments, fortifications, roads and entire cities were built of stone. Famous works of stonemasonry include the Egyptian Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Cusco's Incan Wall, Easter Island's statues, Angkor Wat, Tihuanaco, Persepolis, the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China, Chartres Cathedral, Pumapunku. Masonry is the craft of shaping rough pieces of rock into accurate geometrical shapes, at times simple, but some of considerable complexity, arranging the resulting stones together with mortar, to form structures. Quarrymen split sheets of rock, extract the resulting blocks of stone from the ground. Sawyers cut these rough blocks to required size with diamond-tipped saws; the resulting block if ordered for a specific component is known as sawn six sides. Banker masons are workshop-based, specialize in working the stones into the shapes required by a building's design, this set out on templets and a bed mould.
They can produce anything from stones with simple chamfers to tracery windows, detailed mouldings and the more classical architectural building masonry. When working a stone from a sawn block, the mason ensures that the stone is bedded in the right way, so the finished work sits in the building in the same orientation as it was formed on the ground. Though some stones need to be orientated for the application; the basic tools and skills of the banker mason have existed as a trade for thousands of years. Carvers cross the line from craft to art, use their artistic ability to carve stone into foliage, animals or abstract designs. Fixer masons specialize in the fixing of stones onto buildings, using lifting tackle, traditional lime mortars and grouts. Sometimes modern cements and epoxy resins are used on specialist applications such as stone cladding. Metal fixings, from simple dowels and cramps to specialised single application fixings, are used; the precise tolerances necessary make this a skilled job.
Memorial masons or monumental masons carve inscriptions. The modern stonemason undergoes comprehensive training, both in the classroom and in the working environment. Hands-on skill is complemented by intimate knowledge of each stone type, its application and best uses, how to work and fix each stone in place; the mason may be skilled and competent to carry out one or all of the various branches of stonemasonry. In some areas the trend is in other areas towards adaptability. Stonemasons use all types of natural stone: igneous and sedimentary. Granite is one of the hardest stones, requires much different techniques to sedimentary stones that it is a separate trade. With great persistence, simple mouldings can and have been carved from granite, for example in many Cornish churches and in the city of Aberdeen. However, it is used for purposes that require its strength and durability, such as kerbstones, countertops and breakwaters. Igneous stone ranges from soft rocks such as pumice and scoria to somewhat harder rocks such as tuff to hardest rocks such as granite and basalt.
Marble is a fine worked stone, that comes in various colours, but white. It has traditionally been used for carving statues, for facing many Byzantine and buildings of the Italian Renaissance; the first and most admirable marble carvers and sculptors were the Greeks, namely Antenor and Critias, Praxiteles and others who used the marble of Paros and Thassos islands, the whitest and brightest of all, the Pentelikon marble. Their work was preceded by older sculptors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, but the Greeks were unmatched in plasticity and realistic presentation, either of Gods, or humans; the famous Acropolis of Athens is said to be constructed using the Pentelicon marble. The traditional home of the marble industry is the area around Carrara in Italy, from where a bright and fine, whitish marble is extracted in vast quantities. Slate is a popular choice of stone for memorials and inscriptions, as its fine grain and hardness means it leaves details sharp, its tendency to split into thin plates has made it a popular roofing material.
Many of the world's most famous buildings have been built of sedimentary stone, from Durham Cathedral to St Peter's in Rome. There are two main types of sedimentary stone used in masonry work and sandstones. Examples of limestones include Portland stone. Yorkstone and Sydney sandstone are most used sandstone. Types of stonemasonry are: Fixer Masons This type of masons have specialized into fixing the stones onto the buildings, they might do this with grouts and lifting tackle. They might use things like single application specialized fixings, simple cramps, dowels as well as stone cladding with things like epoxy resins and modern cements. Memorial Masons These are the masons that make carve the inscriptions on them. Today’s stonemasons undergo training, quite comprehensive and is done both in the work environment and in the classroom, it isn’t enough to have hands-on skill anymore. One must have knowledge of the types of stones as well as its best uses and how to work it as well as how to fix i
Thomas Stothard
Thomas Stothard was an English painter and engraver. Stothard was born in London, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre A delicate child, he was sent at the age of five to a relative in Yorkshire, attended school at Acomb, afterwards at Tadcaster and at Ilford, Essex. Showing talent for drawing, he was apprenticed to a draughtsman of patterns for brocaded silks in Spitalfields. In his spare time, he attempted illustrations for the works of his favourite poets; some of these drawings were praised by the editor of the Novelist's Magazine. Stothard's master having died, he resolved to devote himself to art. In 1778 Stothard became a student of the Royal Academy, of which he was elected associate in 1792 and full academician in 1794. In 1812 he was appointed librarian to the Academy after serving as assistant for two years. Among his earliest book illustrations are plates engraved for Bell's Poets. In 1780, he became a regular contributor to the Novelist's Magazine, for which he produced 148 designs, including his eleven illustrations to The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and his graceful subjects from Clarissa and The History of Sir Charles Grandison.
From 1786, Thomas Fielding, a friend of Stothard's and engraver, produced engravings using designs by Stothard, Angelika Kauffmann, of his own. Arcadian scenes were esteemed. Fielding realised these in colour, using copper engraving, achieved excellent quality. Stothard's designs had an exceptional aesthetic appeal, he designed plates for pocket-books, tickets for concerts, illustrations to almanacs, portraits of popular actors. These are popular with collectors for their distinction, his more important works include illustrations for: Two sets for Robinson Crusoe, one for the New Magazine and one for Stockdale's edition The Pilgrim's Progress Harding's edition of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield The Rape of the Lock The works of Solomon Gessner William Cowper's Poems The DecameronHis figure-subjects in Samuel Rogers's Italy and Poems demonstrate that in old age, his imagination remained fertile and his hand firm. Art historian Ralph Nicholson Wornum estimated that Stothard's designs number five thousand and, of these, about three thousand were engraved.
His oil pictures are small. His colouring is rich and glowing in the style of Rubens, who Stothard admired; the Vintage his most important oil painting, is in the National Gallery. He contributed to John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, but his best-known painting is the Procession of the Canterbury Pilgrims, in Tate Britain, the engraving from which, begun by Luigi and continued by Niccolo Schiavonetti and finished by James Heath, was immensely popular; the commission for this picture was given to Stothard by Robert Hartley Cromek, was the cause of a quarrel with his friend William Blake. It was followed by a companion work, the Flitch of Bacon, drawn in sepia for the engraver but was never carried out in colour. In addition to his easel pictures, Stothard decorated the grand staircase of Burghley House, near Stamford in Lincolnshire, with subjects of War and the Descent of Orpheus in Hell, he prepared designs for a frieze and other sculptural decorations for Buckingham Palace, which were not executed, owing to the death of George IV.
He designed a shield presented to the Duke of Wellington by the merchants of London, executed a series of eight etchings from the various subjects that adorned it. Stothard married Rebecca Watkins in 1783, they had eleven children, of whom six -- one daughter -- survived infancy. They lived in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, until 1794, when they moved to a house at 28 Newman Street, Fitzrovia of which Stothard had bought the freehold, his wife died in 1825. His sons included Thomas, accidentally shot dead in about 1801. Stothard died on 27 April 1834, was buried in Bunhill Fields burial ground. Stothard's painting of Erato is given a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon in her "Poetical Catalogue of Pictures", in the Literary Gazette. Another of his paintings, The Fairy Queen Sleeping, is poetically examined in a similar fashion in her "Poetical Sketches of Modern Pictures" in The Troubadour. Coxhead, Albert Crease, Thomas Stothard, R. A. an Illustrated Monograph, London: A. H. Bullen – Contains a short biographical chapter, an dated summary of the various books and periodicals illustrated by Stothard.
Attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Stothard, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. 25. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 970–971. Bray, Anna Elizabeth. Life of Thomas Stothard, R. A. with personal reminiscences: Volume 1, Volume 2. Dobson, Austin. Eighteenth Century Vignettes, volume 1. "Stothard, Thomas". Dictionary of National Biography. 1885–1900. 74 paintings by or after Thomas Stothard at the Art UK site Thomas Stothard online Works by Stothard Paintings by Thomas Stothard