Beningbrough Hall - East landing



A feature of many Baroque houses is the way that vistas stretch from one end of the building to the other. Here, on the first floor, the drama is intensified by the vertiginous view down onto the Hall.

The portrait here is Grinling Gibbons after Sir Godfrey Kneller. Gibbons was Britain's leading decorative woodcarver, who is best known for his realistic and fluid limewood carvings of swags and festoons of fruit for architectural interiors. In the 1660s, Gibbons had worked in York and so the skill of Beningbrough's carvers may derive from direct contact with the greatest craftsman of the day.

Download: In focus
Portraits on display