London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History -- 18th century
The altar-piece is adorned with four noble fluted pilasters, finely
painted and veined with gold, in imitation of _lapis lazuli_, with their
entablature, where the enrichments, and also the capitals of the
pilasters, are double gilt with gold. These intercolumns are twenty-one
panels of figured crimson velvet, and above them six windows, viz., in
each intercolumniation seven panels and two windows, one above the other;
at the greatest altitude above all which is a glory finely done. The
aperture north and south into the choir are (ascending up three steps of
black marble) by two iron folding-doors, being, as that under the
organ-gallery, &c., exquisitely wrought into divers figures, spiral
branches, and other flourishes. There are two others at the west end of
the choir, the one opening into the south aisle, the other in the north,
done by the celebrated artist in this way, M. Tijan.
And what contributes to the beauty of this choir are the galleries, the
bishop’s throne, Lord Mayor’s seat, with the stalls, all which being
contiguous, compose one vast body of carved work of the finest wainscot,
constituting three sides of a quadrangle.
The cupola (within the church) appears erected and elevated on eight
pillars of a large magnitude, adorned with pilasters, entablature,
circular pediments, and arches of the Corinthian order, and each pillar
enriched with a spacious festoon. Here are also as many alcoves fronted
with curious ironwork, and over the arches, at a great height from the
ground, is an entablature, and on the cornice an ambulatory, fronted or
fenced in with handsome ironwork, extending round the inside of the
cupola, above which is a range of thirty-two pilasters of the Corinthian
order, where every fourth intercolumn is adorned with a niche and some
enrichments; and it said that in every foot of altitude the diameter of
this decreaseth one inch.
On the outside of the dome, about twenty feet above the outer roof of the
church, is a range of thirty-two columns, with niches of the same
altitude, and directly counter to those aforesaid within the cupola. To
these columns there is entablament, and above that a gallery with
acroteria, where are placed very spacious and ornamental vases all round
the cupola. At twelve feet above the tops of these vases (which space is
adorned with pilasters and entablament, and the intercolumns are windows)
the diameter is taken in (as appears outwardly) five feet, and two feet
higher it decreases five feet, and a foot above that it is still five
feet less, where the dome outwardly begins to arch, which arches meet
about fifty-two feet higher in perpendicular altitude, on the vertex of
which dome is a neat balcony, and above this a large and beautiful
lantern, adorned with columns of the Corinthian order, with a ball and
cross at the top.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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