Art collections of Holkham Hall
The design of the house was a collaborative effort between Thomas Coke, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, and William Kent, with Matthew Brettingham the elder acting as the on-site architect.
By 1769 all the men involved had died, leaving Thomas's widow, Lady Margaret Tufton, Countess of Leicester (1700–1775), to oversee the completion of the house.
Much thought went into the placing of sculptures and paintings, involving subtle connections and contrasts in the mythological and historical characters and stories depicted.
Examples are the two paintings commissioned by Thomas Coke above the fireplaces in the Saloon, Tarquin Raping Lucretia and Perseus and Andromeda.
Other connections are the sculptures in the two exedras of the Statue Gallery: in the southern one are two satyrs, symbols of ungoverned passion and lust, while opposite are the virgin Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Ceres, the preserver of marriage and sacred law.
These are Titian's Venus and the Lute Player, sold in 1931, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has been replaced in the current hang in the South Dining Room by Melchior d'Hondecoeter's bird painting.
The Saloon also originally had in the centre of the side walls Chiari's Continence of Scipio (commissioned by Thomas Coke in Rome) and Pietro da Cortona's Coriolanus: their present whereabouts is unknown.
The fact that the greater works of art were not originally hung in the Saloon, the main room of the state apartment, suggests that the subject matter of the lost paintings was of prime importance to Thomas Coke's scheme.
Other architectural books include Leone Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria (1452, Ten Books of Architecture) of which both an Italian edition of 1565 and an English edition of 1726 are to be found in the library as is Antoine Desgodetz's Les edifices antiques de Rome dessinés et mesurés très exactement (Paris 1682).
An extensive archive of material relating to the building of the house and the acquisition of the collections exists including letters from both Matthew Brettingham the elder, the executive architect and Baron Lovell (Thomas Coke's title before becoming Earl of Leicester), as well as several architectural plans and elevations showing various alternative designs including many drawings by William Kent.
In 1761 Matthew Brettingham the elder published The Plans, Elevations and Sections, Of Holkham in Norfolk in which he down played the role of Kent in the design of the House.
It may have been during his grand tour that the idea first emerged, Coke had met William Kent in early 1714 and then Richard Boyle the 3rd Earl of Burlington later that same year.
Palladio's I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture) sets out the theories that underlie his designs and includes an extensive series of woodcut illustrations.
These villas formed the basis of the design, though reinterpreted as the centre of an English country estate rather than a summer retreat from Venice, that included working farm buildings.
In 1773 Matthew Brettingham the younger published a new edition of his father's book The Plans, Elevations and Sections of Holkham with additional text in which it is stated that the concept of a central corp de logis with wings was taken from Palladio's unfinished Villa of Trissino at Meledo but that another of the architect's unbuilt designs Villa Mocenigo on the Brenta was the model for four wings.
Brettingham also stated that Lord Leicester found the design with curved colonnades wasteful and adopted the current short corridor links.
Matthew Brettingham the younger stated that the concept for the Marble Hall was Lord Leicester's, inspired by "Palladio's example of a Basilica, or tribunal of justice, exhibited in his designs for Monsignor Barbaro's translation of Vitruvius".
The earliest surviving elevations and plans for Holkham are preserved in the British Library and date from the 1720s, for which a payment of 10 guineas was made to Matthew Brettingham the Elder in 1726, these show a house heavily influenced by Houghton, but without any wings, the Marble Hall is as designed by Kent prior to the changes of 1755, plus the Statue Gallery is in a form close to that built.
The canopied bed, seat furniture and curtains, have retained their original multicoloured Genoa velvet upholstery and was designed by William Kent.
