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Portrait of the Artist
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AFTER JOHANN BAPTIST CLOSTERMAN (1660-1711)

Grinling Gibbons and his wife Elizabeth

1691

RCIN 655096

Grinling Gibbons was the greatest of decorative woodcarvers, and this print is a celebration of his success and affluence. He and his wife Elizabeth, dressed in the finest lace and silks, recline amid draperies and classical architecture: one might take them to be members of the aristocracy. Only the sculptural relief hints at Gibbons's craft, yet it is a marble relief on which he leans, with allusions to Antiquity, not the more humble wood with which he made his name.

Cat. 20


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