Marble Hill House was built in 1724– 1729 by, the mistress of King George II  to the designs of the architect Roger Morris (1695–1749) in collabo- ration with Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pem- broke, one of the “architect earls”.Pembroke, then Lord Herbert, based the design of Marble Hill to a large degree on Andrea Palladio’s 1553 Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese, Italy, and thus incorporated a cubic saloon on the rst oor or piano nobile.Villa Corna- ro also served as a model for planta- tion houses in the American colonies, examples being Drayton Hall (1738– 1742) in Charleston, South Carolina, and Thomas Jefferson’s initial version of Monticello (1768–1770). It was in other respects an adap- tation of a more expansive design by Colen Campbell. It is set in 66 acres (2.67 km2) of park- land known as Marble Hill Park. The Great Room contains lavishly gilded decoration and ve capricci paintings by Giovanni Paolo Pannini. Marble Hill House also contains a loaned col- lection of early Georgian furniture and paintings as well as the Chinoiserie collection of the Lazenby Bequest.