MODELLED CEILINGS 



381 



FIG. 307. Ceiling at No. 16 Bishopsgate Street Without, London. 



Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 



Under the influence of the brothers Adam, detail of exquisite 

 delicacy was introduced, including panels of well-modelled figures. 

 This ornament was sometimes carved in marble or wood, but still 

 more frequently worked in composition and applied to the wood- 

 work. An example by Robert Adam is shown in Fig. 305, and 

 a design by Flaxman in Fig. 303. 



We have already seen in Chapter V. how the busy ceilings 

 of the Jacobean type changed into the coffered ceilings of Inigo 

 Jones and Webb, who established a type which held the field, 

 under Wren and his successors, well into the eighteenth century. 

 The general tendency was to increase the relief of the plaster- 

 work, to imitate nature instead of conventionalising it ; to work 

 on the same lines which Grinling Gibbons was following with 

 his carving in wood. The result was that the plasterwork had 

 frequently to be modelled on wire which formed the stems of 

 the leaves, and much of it was completely detached from the 

 surface of the ceiling which it adorned. A very fine example 

 of this treatment is to be seen in the Courts of Justice at 

 Northampton (Fig. 306). 



