Gilt and painted bed with red hangings, modelled on the 'St Ursula' bed in Carpaccio's Vision of St Ursula

Painted and gilded wood, modern hangings. Peacock blue, gold and venetian red.

The design is modelled on the St Ursula bed in the Carpaccio painting "Vision of St Ursula" of about 1495, in the Accademia, Venice. The painter and theorist John Ruskin, who first saw the painting in 1869, described it at length in Fors Clavigera (1872). In 1876 he was allowed to study and copy the painting in a private room. He came to identify St. Ursula with his beloved Rose La Touche, who had died mad in 1875. In 1897 Edwin Lutyens sketched a similar bed for his future wife, Lady Emily Lytton, and in about 1914 he had two made for his daughters. It is amusing that the same model which had inspired Ruskin's passionate moralising and Lutyens's romantic vision of domestic bliss was followed by Geoffrey Scott (1885-1929) secretary and librarian to the celebrated art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) and, as author of The Architecture of Humanism (1914), the leading English proponent of a classical aesthetic inspired by the Renaissance and Baroque. This style of architecture and decoration was the dominant taste of the English intelligentia in the 1920s.

The bed was designed for the bedroom of William Heywood Haslam in his London house, 8 Hanover Terrace. According to Nicholas Haslam, the son of it original owner, Geoffrey Scott used to stay in the mews house at Hanover Terrace when he was in London. The bed was moved to Great Hundridge Manor, Great Missenden, Bucks in 1927, almost as soon as the Haslam's bought that William and Mary house. Great Hundridge was modernised by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis for Haslam and the antique dealer Dorothy Warren supplied much of the furniture. At Great Hundridge the colouring of the bed was well suited to the painted imitation of scagliola that decorated the bedroom in which it was set and which dated from the late-seventeenth century. This very unusual decoration was described in 1941 by Country Life as 'umber, burnt Siena, ochre and Indian red'. In the illustration of the bed (see refs.), it is shown with a Paisley shawl used as the bedcover. According to Nicholas Haslam, Scott was responsible for the decorations and designed at least one other bed and other furniture, as well as advising on the acquisition of furniture, together with his lover, the antique dealer Dorothy Warren. Most of the upholstery was done by a Mr Southgate.

This bed was lent to the Museum from 18 August 1983 by Nicholas Haslam and acquired by the Museum in March 1984. A note from Nicholas Haslam dated 30 August 1983 records that the valances may have been destroyed because they were 'completely rotted'. He continues 'Anyway , none of the tassels remained, but my brother remembers them as being the same read as the valence, in a dull silk. The valence itself was Venetian red silk, the same stuff inside and out, with a stiffened interlining. Simon asked me about the counter-pane, and luckily I saw my ancient mama on Friday, who remembers it clearly - and her memory is very good - as being the same stuff as the valence with a dull silver/gold inset braid - rather like the other ones that Scott used in the enclosed xeroxes [onRP], I suppose.'

The valances and counterpane were recreated by Seymour Furnishings, Upholsterers, London W.10. The work was done by Mr G. Carter.

It is noted that a bed based on the same original was made for a bedroom in the house of Mrs William K. Vanderbilt and illustrated in American Vogue late August 1917 (title and pages to be checked). It was designed by Miss Barbara Rutherwood, later Mrs Cyril Hatch. The room was said to be decorated in in apricot, rose and mauve, accented with black.

A chair copied from the same painting is in a private collection.

W.25-1984