Check the official guidebook or ask one of the Hall assistants, but I think the Staircase and ceiling mural paintings started off as scenes about Apollo the Sun god of the Romans and were later changed to scenes of the myth of Prometheus.
If you turn the photo round, you can see other pictures!!!
The Hall staircase and ceiling have huge mural paintings.
As the Hall was supposedly built in 1580 to 1588 it’s early years saw the reign of Elizabeth I, then the succession chaos, the religious chaos, the rule of Oliver Cromwell, the restoration with Charles II who was king in Scotland before he was king of England, then James II and the invite to William and Mary to replace the catholic King.
The staircase is probably painted by Laguere originally and he is said to be an assistant of Verrio who is an Italian painter (from either Lecce in the southern Kingdom of Sicily or Naples city in the Kingdom of Naples) Verrio is around in England painting all sorts of awsome mural paintings in renowned places in the UK. That’s in the time of Charles II and the restoration, following the Protectorate, later after the Great Rebellion, presumably when the Catholic monarchy is replaced by William and Mary, the staircase and ceiling are painted again, or altered and added to by James Thornhill.
Interestingly, the Montague who invites Verrio to England is married to General Monkes daughter and his son marries into another prominent family, Charles II makes him a protector of the south of Carolina in the USA before independence, and his grandfather, a Catholic supporter of Queen Mary, is one of the executors of Henry viii’s will along with Henry Willoughby. This could mean that Wollaton Hall was being used to make a big statement about supporting the restoration, and then having to change tack/sides with the reign of William and Mary.
The painting has been photographed here using a pro-HDR app on a sony xperia arc phone and because of the ability to expose the picture in three different ways Dark, Light, and then combine them, the pictures are really quite good considering how dark the paintings are now.
I have made a FreeMind mind map with all the internet links of all these people and places if anyone would like a copy, its not possible to take a snapshot of it yet and the links wouldn’t work from a picture but it’s necessary to download the freemind gnu license software to a pc to read it. It’s interesting to see the architecture of Lecce in Southern Italy, lots of the Hall architecture is reflected from there…and the Gate of Clumber Park…
Here’s a Notts History link about the paintings in the Hall either when it was first a museum, or before:-
http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/articles/tts/tts1912/wollaton2.htm
Google Search links Laguere Artist!
Dilydaydream Farmer Facebook
Wollypark's Blog...Wollaton Park Super Greenspace 