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