Work of Grinling Gibbons

Grinling Gibbons, whom Horace Walpole called "an original genius, a citizen of nature", was without question the finest virtuoso woodcarver ever to appear in Europe. This book shows the range of Gibbons's work in all its glory. It includes the stone carvings as well as the woodwork, the monuments as well as the decorations. The fine photographs, many of them specially taken by Anthony Kersting, show the detail in marvelous exactitude as well as the grandeur of overall design. Geoffrey Beard's readable and scholarly text clears away the wishful attributions of the last two centuries to give us a clear picture of the incomparable artist as he actually was.