page_title: Architecture of Chiswick House
section_title: Red Velvet Room
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Chiswick House / Principal rooms / Red Velvet Room
caption_attribution_description: Ground floor plan of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis after Palladio
context_page_description: Chiswick House is an example of English Palladian Architecture in Burlington Lane, Chiswick, in the London Borough of Hounslow in England. Arguably the finest remaining example of Neo-Palladian architecture in London, the house was designed by Lord Burlington, and built between 1727 and 1729. The architectural historian Richard Hewlings has established that Chiswick House was an attempt by Lord Burlington to create a Roman villa, rather than Renaissance pastiche, situated in a symbolic Roman garden. Chiswick House is inspired in part by several buildings of the 16th-century Italian architects Andrea Palladio and his assistant Vincenzo Scamozzi. The house is often said to be directly inspired by Palladio's Villa Capra "La Rotonda" near Vicenza, due to the fact that architect Colen Campbell had offered Lord Burlington a design for a villa very closely based on the Villa Capra for his use at Chiswick. However, although still clearly influential, Lord Burlington had rejected this design and it was subsequently used at Mereworth Castle, Kent. Lord Burlington was not just restricted to the influence of Andrea Palladio as his library list at Chiswick indicates.
context_section_description: The Red Velvet Room once contained the largest and most expensive paintings in Lord Burlington's collection, including paintings by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Giacomo Cavedone (1577–1660), Peter Paul Rubens (1573–1640), Rembrandt van Ryn (1606–69), Salvator Rosa (1615–1673), Pier Francesco Mola (1612–1666), Jacopo Ligozzi (c.1547–1632), Jean Lemaire (1598–1659), Francisque Millet (1642–79) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). The Venetian window in this room is derived from the Queen's Chapel at St James's Palace and was much imitated. The chimneypieces and surrounds again derive from Jonesian sources, in this case from the Queen's House, Greenwich. These marble chimneypieces have the inclusion of roses, Scottish thistles, grapes, sunflowers, oak apples, Pomegranates and fleur-de-lys which may be interpreted as Jacobite symbols.
  The ceiling, similar in design to that in the Green Velvet Room, but containing painted panels has at its centre a painting attributed to William Kent representing Lord Burlington's patronage of the arts.  The main character is the Roman god Mercury, the great patron of the arts and god of commerce, who is dispensing money into the arts depicted at the bottom of the panel. Burlington's wealth is represented by a putto who holds a cornucopia. The arts are represented by a self-portrait of William Kent (art), a supine bust of Inigo Jones (sculpture) and a putto with a temple plan of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis as depicted by Palladio in his architectural treatise I quattro libri dell’architettura first published in 1570.
  An additional interpretation of this ceiling and its iconography relates to Freemasonry and its legendary history, and that this space could have functioned as a working Masonic Lodge. Positioned around the central painting are six roundels containing personifications of six of the then known stars or planets of the Moon, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn with their associated zodiac signs. The seventh planet, that of Mercury, is personified in the central painting and is accompanied by a section of the northern zodiacal wheel containing the zodiacs for the planet Mercury and the constellations Gemini and Virgo. As such this ceiling painting is an important depiction of the universe as viewed through early Georgian eyes.  (The Freemasons equated the seven known planets with the several liberal arts of which the fifth, Geometry, was considered the most important). At the centre of the painting is positioned the eight pointed star of the Order of the Garter which Lord Burlington received from King George II in 1730. This star also represents the Sun at the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice, a day which the Freemasons associate with their Patron Saint, the 'messenger' (like Mercury) St John the Baptist.
  Recent research on the iconography of the ceiling paintings in this room has also suggested that it may be the first visual reference to the third degree of Freemasonry, that of 'Master Mason' which first come to light in around 1730.
  A third, and potentially the most controversial explanation of the iconographical program of the central ceiling painting can be read in terms of Lord Burlington's suspected Jacobite loyalties.  In this regard the meaning of the  painting can be interpreted as the 'Crucifixion' and 'Resurrection' of King Charles I, the great Stuart martyr whose murder was promoted in Jacobite rhetoric as paralleled to the Passion of Jesus Christ (King Charles II returned from exile in 1660). If this reading is correct, the three ladies at the bottom of the central panel represent the three Maries who biblically were present at Christ's Crucifixion. Here the bare-breasted lady in blue with child is the Virgin Mary; the lady dressed in blue and red with reddish hair bound up in the style of a courtesan and on her knees as if at the base of the cross, Mary Magdalene. The third lady, holding a roundel containing the image of William Kent, is the remaining Mary. King Charles I is represented by both the fallen bust of Inigo Jones and the god Mercury, as th
caption: Detail in the Red Velvet Room ceiling of a ground floor plan of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis after Andrea Palladio
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