East Riding Museums

This item is in the Burton Constable Hall collections and is included on this database by kind permission of the Burton Constable Foundation. On 25th July 1776, the architect James Wyatt submitted his bill for five guineas for ‘Clean Designs for a Chimney Piece and Drawing at large’. John Bacon was commissioned to execute the design and by the following August, Wyatt had paid ‘Mr Bacon’ £262 10s ‘for a Statuary marble Chimney Piece for the Drawing Room’ and settled the additional costs for the seven packing cases required to transport it to Hull. John Bacon served his apprenticeship at a porcelain factory in Lambeth before working for Josiah Wedgewood (1730-92) and Eleanor Coade (1733-1821). He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1768 and became a Royal Academician in 1777 the same year he completed this masterful chimneypiece. Bacon’s Aldobrandini relief derives from an Antique source. The original Aldobrandini Wedding was a Roman wall painting that had been unearthed in 1605. This celebrated work was named after its first subsequent owner, Cardinal Aldobrandini. Located in the Great Drawing Room.