The State Apartments sequence at Chatsworth culminates in the intimate State Closet, originally lacquered by Gerrit Jensen in 1692, making it one of the earliest English interiors to employ Japanese-inspired lacquer work.
When the room was dismantled in 1700 to prepare the new West front, the lacquered panels were reused to make furniture. The State Closet is where the King and Queen would meet their most trusted advisors.
On the ceiling, Louis Laguerre painted The Judgment of Paris, with Juno, Venus and Minerva descending to demand the golden apple. Mercury swoops down to Paris, who must choose the fairest goddess.
This theme, flattering to Queen Mary II, was an allegory of beauty, choice, and legitimacy, with Mary as the goddess chosen above all others.
For the 1st Duke of Devonshire, who commissioned this work, it was also a way of reinforcing his loyalty to Mary’s unique role in legitimising William’s III reign.
Together, the Great Chamber and State Rooms form a carefully choreographed procession:
• Great Chamber: Restoration of virtue, abundance, and moral order (Return of the Golden Age).
• State Drawing Room: Divine harmony among the gods, contrasted with the dangers of disorder (Assembly of the Gods).
• State Music Room: The dangers of ambition, tempered by cosmic harmony (Phaethon and Apollo).
• State Bedchamber: Renewal and chastity, the dawn of a new order (Aurora Dispersing the Night).
• State Closet: Beauty, choice, and legitimacy (Judgment of Paris).
The sequence moves from public spectacle to private intimacy, from general promises of abundance to pointed affirmations of William and Mary’s legitimacy. In doing so, it articulates both the monarchy’s ideological programme and the Duke of Devonshire’s own political narrative, expressed through the interplay of architecture, painting, carving and furnishing.
Images taken by Sarah Rawlinson at HeritagePhotographs.com
