Completed in 1694, the Great Chamber was the principal room of Chatsworth's State Apartments, where the Court would have assembled to await the King and Queen.
It was sometimes used as a dining room by the 1st Duke of Devonshire and may have contained a buffet, furnished with fine silver and gilt plate.
The carved limewood decoration on the panelling contains representations of dead game, fish and fowl, another reference to the possible use of the room for eating. Due to their superior quality, the carvings were for a long time attributed to the work of Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721), until Samuel Watson’s name was discovered in the 1st Duke’s Building Accounts.
When new, the carvings would have appeared very pale against the golden coloured oak, a distinction lost over time due to the oxidisation of the limewood and atmospheric pollution.
The ceiling, painted by Antonio Verrio (1639-1707), depicts the Triumph of the Virtues over the Vices. Figures representing virtue are presided over by the goddess of Justice, Astraea, who governed the Golden Age, a mythical time when mankind was in a state of innocence. The allegory here suggests she can now return because of the blessing of William and Mary’s reign.
Figures representing vice are driven down in the scene. Atropos (one of the three Fates) is shown cutting the thread of life with her ‘abhorred sheers’. Verrio, who was quarrelsome with the 1st Duke’s housekeeper, Mrs Hackett, chose to paint this vice in her image, thereby immortalising her on the ceiling.
Assembled in the fireplace is a group of flower vases and urns, a customary display during the summer months when a fire was not required. Each of the spouts on the vases would have held an individual bloom grown in the hothouses in the garden. The vases and urns were made in Delft from tin-glazed earthenware, a technique employed in Holland to imitate Oriental porcelain in the late 17th century. Learn more about these ceramics in this short film.
When first built, the views of the garden beyond the windows would have been an important feature of the room. At that time, the fashion was for very formal layouts in the French style of gardening, with terraces and geometric plantings, and with a large parterre to the south before the Canal Pond.
This was mainly replaced in the mid-18th century by the 3rd Duke of Devonshire, and by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783) for the 4th Duke of Devonshire.
In a sustained period of hot, dry weather, the outline of the 1st Duke's parterre can be seen. Learn more.
