Grinling Gibbons

Sir Godfrey Kneller

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This three-quarter length portrait represents a sculptor acclaimed for his virtuoso carvings in pearwood. He wears a long wig and holds compasses in one hand, the other resting on a cast or copy of Proserpina (part of Bernini's famous sculptural group "Pluto and Proserpina" at the Villa Borghese, Rome). Sir Robert Walpole owned the related painting by ca. 1723 and hung it at Houghton above a fireplace in the Common Parlor in 1736, framed with a carved garland by Gibbons. The third Earl of Orford sold the parinting to Catherine the Great and it is now at the Hermitage; the garland remains in place and is one of the few works at Houghton that survive from the days of the first earl's grandfather.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art