Hidden treasure | 30 August 2018

In 1675 Lady Bedingfield wrote to Robert Paston, first Earl of Yarmouth. Never, she exclaimed, had she seen anything so fine as the latter’s mansion, Oxnead Hall. It was ‘a terrestriall paradise’, the ‘gardens so sweet — so full of flowers’, the house so clean. ‘Nor,’ she concluded, ‘did I ever in my life find anything in poetry or painting half so fine.’ Almost all this splendour vanished long ago. But its essence survives, compressed into a single painting, ‘The Paston Treasure’, currently the centrepiece of an exhibition at Norwich Castle Museum.

It is a cornucopia of baroque bric-à-brac, crammed with a jumbled abundance in which curvilinear tropical shells, ornate cups, jewellery and a globe are interspersed with musical instruments, flowers, fruit, a lobster, living bird and monkey. Behind and above are an extinguished candle and various timepieces that suggest this was a memento mori — a reminder of passing time and approaching death.