Since the tympanums are the same in shape and of the same size,
measuring each thirty-one feet by six, and since all stand in the
same relation toward the whole room, Mr. Maynard has followed
throughout a single method of arrangement. Each tympanum is over
three doors or three windows, as the case may be. In accordance,
therefore, with this exactly balanced architectural scheme, a
pyramidal group of three female figures--pyramidal because any
other form would have looked top-heavy--is placed above the central
opening. Balancing or, so to say, subsidiary figures, which, if only
from their position at the diminishing ends of the tympanum, are
necessarily of less importance, are placed over the doors or windows
to the side. Thus the decoration is poised in complete accordance
with the disposition of the wall which it crowns. The figures at the
ends, it will be noticed, are of two sorts, mermaids and emblazoned
shields; but since they alternate in pairs from tympanum to tympanum,
the shields occurring in the east and west and the mermaids in the
north and south, this variety serves very well to accentuate the
unity of the composition of the four paintings. The ornament, also,
is the same in its more important features: the throne in the centre,
flanked by cornucopias; the arabesque border with its dolphins,
suggestive of seafaring; and the lists of names of discoverers and
colonizers which occupy the spaces to the right and left of the
central group, and serve to draw together the whole composition.
It would be well if the visitor were to hold in mind these points,
for in the two following pavilions on this floor, where the
conditions governing the painter are exactly the same as in the
present room, it will be seen that the artists employed have followed
in their work the same orderly and logical plan of arrangement which
Mr. Maynard has here adopted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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