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Description: | This full-length portrait of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk by the Italian painter Biagio Rebecca (1734/5-1808) belongs to a series of thirteen ancestral portraits commissioned by Sir John Griffin Griffin, 4th Lord Howard de Walden, 1st Lord Braybrooke for the ornamentation of the Saloon at Audley End in Essex. This room the first in a suite of five, newly arranged by Sir John Griffin Griffin is most richly decorated, as an observer of 1819 wrote: 'The frieze, cornice, pilasters and other parts, are richly carved and gilt; and the chimney-piece contains some beautiful miniature paintings, with the arms of the Howard family'. The interior architecture of this room gracefully integrates the rooms original Elizabethan 'stuccoed ceiling ornamented with pendantives' and frieze with an eighteenth-century neoclassical panelled interior suggestive of an arcade, each arch of which incorporates a portrait of 'the distinguished personages connected with the history of the place' (Wright's History of Essex, 1836). An extensive inscription records the genesis and development of the house. Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk (1561-1626) was the son of the 4th Duke and Duchess of Norfolk; in 1583 he married Catherine Knevet. He was a naval commander for Elizabeth I and was created Lord Howard de Walden and Earl of Suffolk by James I in 1603. He was responsible for uncovering the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and in 1616 he built Audley End. In 1619 he was briefly imprisoned and heavily fined due to charges of embezzlement against the crown. | Subjects: | 1st Earl of Suffolk) portrait (Thomas Howard | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Rebecca, Biagio (Italian painter, 1735-1808, active in Great Britain) Æ | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8737... | Go to resource |
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