The Picture Gallery, with its glass ceiling, is a noble room, filled with pictures of high merit, many being chefs-d’œuvre of the various artists. It will be sufficient to say that it contains, among others, no less than ten Snyders of large size and of almost unmatched excellence (the only others we know of equal or more excellence being those at Welbeck), and admirable examples of Tintoretti, Titian (a remarkably fine picture), Guido, Paolo Veronese, Paris Bordone, Luca Giordano, Backhuysen, Zuccarelli, Hogarth, Bernardo Canaletto, Poussin, Carlo Cignani, Salvator Rosa, Bordenone, Lely (a nude Nell Gwynne, which contrasts very unfavourably with the Titian on the same walls), Paul Bril, Bronzino, Bassano, Fyt, Delia Nottie, Murillo, Zucchero, &c.
Lowther Castle, the Sculpture Gallery.
The other apartments, beautiful as they all undoubtedly are, and filled as they are with choice works of Art, are not necessary to be named. There are, however, two of the most important features of Lowther yet to be noticed. These are the two Sculpture Galleries and the passages and corridors leading to them. To these we proceed to direct brief attention.
Roman Sculptured Stone from Kirkby Thore.
In one part of the Gallery is a marvellously extensive and highly important assemblage of Roman inscribed stones—altars, monumental stones, inscriptions of cohorts, &c.—from the Roman wall and from the old stations in the three counties; mediæval sculptures from the neighbourhood; and a number of Celtic and Roman urns and other antiquities of more than passing interest: to these, however, we cannot find space to direct attention.[50] Among the Roman sculptured stones at Lowther Castle are the following:—From Drumburgh a fragment, bearing the words—
PEDATVRA
VINDO
MORVCI
Vindomora being a station in the first Iter of Antonine; another with the words COH VII (cohors septima); and a stone bearing a female helmeted figure, holding a wreath in her right, and a distaff in her left, hand. From Kirkby Thore the upper part of an altar, inscribed IOVI SERAPI L ALFENVS PATE[RNVS] (Iovi Serapi Lucius Alfenus Pate[rnus]); a singular sculptured stone bearing a representation of a death-bed scene, the sufferer partaking of her last meal preparatory to her departure, the only inscription left being FILIA CRESC IMAG NIER (Filia Crescentis imagnif[e]r); a stone representing a mounted warrior with uplifted sword, trampling on a foe; a fragment of another, where the mounted warrior is in full career, spearing his prostrate foe; another stone, bearing much the same design as the last, but in a more complete state; a fir-cone; a female head; and a lion overpowering a ram. From Plumpton, or Old Penrith, a remarkably fine sepulchral inscribed stone, bearing a figure, probably intended to represent a deceased child. He is dressed in a tunic, and holds in his left hand a whip, and in his right a kind of toy. The inscription is—