I was trying to figure out who was responsible for the immense amount of high quality sculpture at Blenheim, including the grand Corinthian capitals on both façades.
It seems that most of it must have been done by Grinling Gibbons and his workshop, which – according to the recent and excellent Pevsner – was employed between 1708 and 1712 (Vanbrugh complained that Gibbons was paid much more than he was):-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Dear Charles–
Beautiful photographs! –Yet I can’t help but think of Henry David Thoreau’s strictures in his journal (June 26, 1852): “To what end pray is so much stone hammered? An insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave– … The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. She was not simple–& why should I be imposed on by the hundred gates of her prison. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man’s field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has mistaken the true end of life.– that places hammered marble before–honesty.” (Please make allowances for his unusual punctuation.)
All best wishes from deliciously Puritan New England,
Ivan
Dear Ivan, I fear that was the majority view at the time and not just in Massachusetts. From Pope onwards, people thought it over-the-top, which perhaps it is, but in a very magnificent way. Charles
Certainly very magnificent!
–Ivan