Thomas Sackville's Hall of Fame: displaced, reinvented and preserved at Knole

Stoddart, Olivia; Alabone, Gerry

Thomas Sackville's Hall of Fame: displaced, reinvented and preserved at Knole

Download

Name

Thomas_Sackville_s_Hall_of_Fame_-_displaced__reinvented_and_preserved_at_Knole.pdf

Description

visibility:open

Size

2.06 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (CRC64NVME)

yZX6WNNm0ro=

Download

Name

Thomas_Sackville_s_Hall_of_Fame_-_displaced__reinvented_and_preserved_at_Knole.pdf

Description

visibility:open

Size

2.06 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (CRC64NVME)

yZX6WNNm0ro=

Resource type

Journal article

Creator (person)

Stoddart, Olivia

Alabone, Gerry

Date published

June 20, 2022

Abstract

Between 1605 and 1608 Knole was transformed into a dazzling Renaissance palace by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset. All around its largest Gallery ran a frieze of nearly fifty oval portraits, of which thirty-eight survive on their original rectangular framed oak panels. In 1702 the paintings were prised from their walls and moved elsewhere in the house. The surviving panels had deteriorated, mostly owing to movement in their wood being restrained by their original engaged batten frames. Sources state that in 1793 the paintings restorer Francis Parsons was responsible for significant interventions that effectively changed the set from fragments of a fitted Jacobean decorative interior into a hang of individual paintings in a more contemporary neoclassical livery. Aesthetic changes made by Parsons reflect a change in taste during this era whilst simultaneously addressing the paintings' physical deterioration—principally interventions to the back of the panels in an attempt to keep the portraits flat. Additionally, the set was augmented with six portraits, possibly older than Sackville's original set. These treatments carried out during the eighteenth century to stabilize, restore, augment and update this important Jacobean portrait set demonstrate careful manipulation of their condition and significance.