ABSTRACT
Ascending the stairs at Powis Castle, the murals on the east wall show an illusionistic convex flight of steps to the right, populated with allegorical figures representing music, poetry and painting at the foot, the parcae at the top and Ceres reclining to the left. The most revealing of all poems describing the physical and emotional experience of viewing murals is a paean to James Thornhill’s Rape of Helen painted onto the staircase of Charborough House, Dorset, for the army officer and Whig MP Thomas Erle in 1718. The poem itself provides an ekphrastic account of the estate, progressing through its exterior landscape to the front gates of the house into the hall, ‘Adorn’d by ye most curious hand of Art’. Both the Earl and Lady Anne’s poems deliberately remove the house and its estates from the earthly realm and its political machination.
