格林列·吉本斯

Grinling Gibbons (4 April 1648 – 3 August 1721) was an Anglo-Dutch sculptor and wood carver known for his work in England, including Windsor Castle, the Royal Hospital Chelsea and Hampton Court Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and other London churches, Petworth House and other country houses, Trinity College, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge. Gibbons was born to English parents in Holland, where he was educated.

His father was a merchant. Gibbons was a member of the Drapers' Company of London; he is widely regarded as the finest wood carver working in England, and the only one whose name is widely known among the general public. Most of his work is in lime (Tilia) wood, especially decorative Baroque garlands made up of still-life elements at about life size, made to frame mirrors and decorate the walls of churches and palaces, but he also produced furniture and small relief plaques with figurative scenes. He also worked in stone, mostly for churches. By the time he was established he led a large workshop, and the extent to which his personal hand appears in later work varies.

Life

Very little is known about his early life. The name Grinling is formed from sections of two family names.

He was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and it is sometimes thought that his father may have been the Englishman Samuel Gibbons, who worked under Inigo Jones, but even two of his closest acquaintances, the portrait painter Thomas Murray and the diarist John Evelyn, cannot agree on how he came to be introduced to King Charles II. He moved to Deptford, England, around 1667, and by 1693 had accepted commissions from the royal family and had been appointed as a master carver. By 1680 he was already known as the "King's Carver", and carried out exquisite work for St Paul's Cathedral, Windsor Castle, and the Earl of Essex's house at Cassiobury. His carving was so fine that it was said a pot of carved flowers above his house in London would tremble from the motion of passing coaches.

The diarist Evelyn first discovered Gibbons' talent by chance in 1671. Evelyn, from whom Gibbons rented a cottage near Evelyn's home in Sayes Court, Deptford (today part of south-east London), wrote the following: "I saw the young man at his carving, by the light of a candle. I saw him to be engaged on a carved representation of Tintoretto's Crucifixion, which he had in a frame of his own making." Later that same evening, Evelyn described what he had seen to Sir Christopher Wren. The ‘Crucifixion’ and frame now hang in the library in Dunham Massey Hall in Cheshire. Wren and Evelyn then introduced him to King Charles II who gave him his first commission – still resting in the dining room of Windsor Castle.

Gibbons was a member of the Drapers' Company in London, being admitted by patrimony in 1672 and called to the livery in 1685. He was elected to the court and as a warden and then stood for election to be Master in 1718, 1719, and 1720, losing to an alderman each time.

Horace Walpole later wrote about Gibbons: "There is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, and chained together the various productions of the elements with the free disorder natural to each species."

Gibbons is buried at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London, along with his wife Elizabeth. They are both buried in the crypt as attested by a plaque in the church below a wreath of limewood, carved by Gibbons and donated by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral in 1965.

Work

Gibbons was employed by Wren to work on St Paul's Cathedral and later was appointed as master carver to George I. He was also commissioned by William III to create carvings, some of which adorn Kensington Palace. An example of his work can be seen in the Presence Chamber above the fireplace, which was originally intended to frame a portrait of Queen Mary II after her death in 1694. Also in the Orangery at Kensington, you can see some his pieces. Many fine examples of his work can still be seen in the churches around London, particularly the choir stalls and organ case of St Paul's Cathedral. Some of the finest Gibbons carvings accessible to the general public are those on display at the National Trust's Petworth House in West Sussex. At Petworth the Carved Room is host to a fine and extensive display of intricate wooden carvings by Gibbons.

His work can be seen in the London churches of St Michael Paternoster Royal and St James, Piccadilly, where he carved the wood reredos and marble font. The Anglican dislike of painted altarpieces typically left a large space on the east wall that needed filling, which often gave Grinling's garlands a very prominent position, as here.

In 1682 King Charles II commissioned Gibbons to carve a panel as a diplomatic gift for his political ally Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Cosimo Panel is an allegory of art triumphing over hatred and turmoil and includes a medallion with a low relief of Pietro da Cortona, Cosimo's favourite painter. The panel is housed in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. It was displayed in the United Kingdom in the Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 22 October 1998 until 24 January 1999.

Tobias Rustat commissioned three statues of Stuart kings from the workshop of Grinling Gibbons in the 1670s and '80s. These were the standing statue of Charles II at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, an equestrian statue of Charles II in Windsor Castle and the statue of James II, now in Trafalgar Square. The last was commissioned for the Palace of Whitehall, apparently at the same time as the standing Charles II, and the two works might have been intended as pendant pieces.

In 1685, the new king James II asked Gibbons to carve a panel for another Italian ally, Francesco II d'Este, Duke of Modena, brother to his second wife Mary of Modena. The Modena Panel is a memento mori for Charles II who died earlier that year and includes a funeral dirge from the play The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses by dramatist James Shirley: "There is no armour against fate; Death lays its icy hand on kings: Sceptre and crown must tumble down". It also features a medallion self-portrait of Gibbons. The panel is displayed in the Galleria Estense in Modena.

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Grinling Gibbons」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。