The Elysium Closet in the Little Castle at Bolsover

The scheme is an intricate and amusing puzzle, full of references to William and his family.

It plays with Classical and Renaissance ideas about the contrast between physical and spiritual love, and how earthly delights can be guiltless.

The paintings are the culmination of an iconographic programme through seven rooms in the Little Castle at Bolsover in Derbyshire. The identity of the artist is unknown.

The building was a pleasure house, used for short stays and day trips. It was the setting for intimate banquets and lavish entertainments.

Three concentric circles of classical figures recede upward into the distance. At the centre is a young man seated on a cloud.

There are contrasting figures in contemporary Jacobean dress over the glazed doors to the balcony, and a banner saying ‘All is But vanite’.

The new arrangement cleverly creates lines of connected figures, running vertically from the cornices to the centre.

Fire could cleanse, energise, refine and recast. It was enchanting and poetic. Perhaps its power allowed the Cavendishes, who were lovers, to rise into the classical heaven of Elysium to join the gods. Or maybe its magic could make the paintings come to life.

You can read the text of a Jacobean masque where celestial fire had the power to animate statues (via the Luminarium website).

The goddesses on the first cornice reference Christian interpretations of love, with connected ideas of temptation, sin and purity.

One Venus is being offered an apple, like Eve, although, intriguingly, she rejects the gift. The child is probably Amor or Love. The other Venus holds a rose like the Virgin Mary.

The theme of earthly and heavenly love recurs in dramatic works associated with William. Ben Jonson’s 'The New Inn' of 1629 includes a debate between the characters Lovel and Beaufort (meaning beautiful castle).


This could have been an in-joke, fitting with the decoration at Bolsover where the plays might be read or performed.

Venus and Mars are trapped in Vulcan’s net, while Eros shoots an arrow of desire.

Above them, a man and a woman, both derived from the figure of Diana in the original black and white print, are seated beside a standing boy. The boy bends his elbow, perhaps echoing the pose of Eros.

Eros may have morphed into the standing boy, and his parents Mars and Venus have been translated into the seated couple beside him.

Neptune, with his trident, is the god of fertility. He might have ensured the conception.

The boy and the youth have a sash and a wand. It seems the boy is transformed again. Now he becomes Apollo, the sun god, although, curiously he acquires none of Apollo’s attributes like a lyre.

This youth could have a dual identity, as both Apollo and an idealised Cavendish boy.

If William and his relatives occupied the room, engulfed perhaps in magic painted fire, they could, in their imaginations, become any or all of these figures, poetically blending gods and mortals and evolving through the generations.

This sequence begins with the empty space in front of the glazed doors to the balcony. If William stood there, perhaps with his younger brother Charles, they would complete the painted sequence above.

A boy holding a moon sits directly above the doorway. The moon might be a hallmark of William’s ancestry. It makes the letter C for Cavendish, as well as being an emblem of his mother’s ancient noble family, the Ogles of Northumberland.

The boy could be a translated version of William.

Some of the figures appear to have strayed into Elysium from Derbyshire without a transformation. The boy in green over the glazed doors is wearing simple Jacobean clothing.

The laughing and weeping philosophers are also dressed in contemporary clothes.

The furred gown of Heraclitus would have been appropriate for a professional gentleman.

Curiously, Democritus wears a soft, felted hat, marking him out as a man of lower status. Perhaps he is an actor?

The philosophers resemble a portrait of Ben Jonson by Abraham van Blyenberch.

The poet came to Bolsover in 1618, shortly before the interiors were decorated, and he may have had a role in the invention.

These could be portraits, advertising Jonson’s scholarship and wisdom, while teasing him as a lowly player.

A weeping man in the central ring, based on Saturn in the original print, is posed like Heraclitus. He could be another version of the philosopher, and so, perhaps, of Jonson.

If the poet stood in front of the glazed doors, he too might rise and be transformed, entering Elysium, alongside William and his family.

The phrase ‘All is But vanite’ is painted on a banner above the doors. It is a biblical quotation that could relate to the philosophers’ optimism and pessimism about the human world.

However, the phrase carries a different meaning if ‘vanity’ was used to mean a masque or show.

While the Cavendishes inhabited the enchanted space of the Little Castle, high on the hill at Bolsover, they were poised between earth and heaven.

Through the magic of the paintings they could be refashioned in body and spirit, becoming patterns of virtue, love and truth.

Delightfully, they could indulge in all the pleasures of the body but still enjoy eternal bliss.