Library at Monserrate, 1891

On the left, as the hall is entered, is the library, a room thirty feet long by twenty wide and nineteen feet high, finished in walnut, with a door in high repoussé work, representing Diana in the chase, taken from an Italian palace. The library contains four thousand volumes of standard works on biography, history, poetry, and theology, in Portuguese, French, and Spanish. In the room are a model of the statue of Marcus Aurelius, in Rome ; a model, also, of the Column of Vespasian, in yellow Antico marble ; Cinque Cento bronzes, and Indian arms captured by the Viceroy of India at the taking of Delhi ; antique busts of the Roman emperors ; and swords from Delhi, taken after the capture by Lord Canning. An immense library-table occupies the centre of the room ; and the windows open on the great sloping lawn at the side of the palace.

Door in high repoussé work

This door, after many years in languish, is about to be replaced in its original (Monserrate) location. Would that we knew more of its original location in Italy. The mythological scene that it represents is certainly not one involving the virginal Diana! More about that later.

Four thousand volumes: biography, history, poetry and theology. The surviving shelf labels rather annoyingly read "Misc." for miscellaneous. So perhaps the label that I thought read "Persia" was Poesia after all.

Marcus Aurelius

Column of Vespasian

There are Roman coins from the time of Vespasian showing a figure standing atop a column. At the centre of the library table stands a model column with a figure at its summit. Better known are the remaining three standing columns at the corner of the Temple of Vespasian, could it not be that the model on the desk was in fact a representation of Trajan's column, or indeed that of Marcus Aurelius?

Colonna Trajana by Piranesi, 1750

Cinquecento bronzes

Antique busts of Roman Emperors

Indian Arms

Captured by the Viceroy of India at the taking of Delhi - swords from Delhi, taken after the capture by Lord Canning.