No house embodies the spirit of one dynasty better than Chatsworth. Set in an unspoilt Derbyshire valley, surrounded by wild moorland, and home to the Cavendish family for more than four hundred years, this treasure house is filled with works of art and objects that have all, in their time, represented the very best of the new - from Nicolas Poussin'sEt in Arcadia Egoand Antonio Canova'sEndymionto seminal modern works by Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Michael Craig-Martin, among many others.
Today, since the recent completion of a decade-long programme of renovations, the exterior of the house is gleaming, its stone façade newly cleaned and its window frames freshly gilded. Inside, through the brilliant juxtaposition of old and new, its rooms crackle with creative energy.Chatsworth, Arcadia, Nowtells the story of this extraordinary house through seven 'scenes' in its life which provide the book's narrative structure; running alongside is Victoria Hely-Hutchinson's stunning photographic portrait of the house and its collections at this most optimistic point in its history.
As Chatsworth's forward-looking current occupant, the twelfth Duke of Devonshire, likes to point out: 'Everything was new once.' Leafing through this exquisite volume will be as close as possible to holding a piece of the house itself in your hands.