Overdoor Decoration

This wood carving by Grinling Gibbons, England’s most famous master of this medium, comes from the decoration above a door of the Inner Library at Cassiobury Park, near London, one of the artist’s earliest commissions. Decorative elements from this house were sold after it was pulled down in 1922, but many rooms were photographed before their destruction, and the original location of surviving carvings can thus be identified.