Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.Phillimore, Lucy
History
Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.
Phillimore, Lucy
Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714 -- Biography; Wren family; Wren, Christopher, Sir, 1632-1723
S. Bennet Fink, a very graceful and original composition despite the
corner into which it was squeezed; and S. Olave's, Jewry, built of brick
and stone with a good pinnacled stone tower, were begun at this period,
and finished three years later. S. Dionysius, or, as it was commonly
called, S. Dionis, Back Church Street, was one of the first completed;
its Ionic eastern façade was in Wren's most classical style; the pulpit
was carved by Grinling Gibbons. Its tower and steeple, according to a
frequent custom of Wren's, were added some years later. S. Dionis has,
alas! now been swept away, and its site, where the original church was
consecrated in 1288, desecrated.[136] The beautiful little S. Bennet's
has shared the same unholy fate. S. George's, Botolph Lane, built also
in 1674, a handsome stone church with a vaulted roof and good oak
fittings, though threatened, still fortunately survives.
[_GRINLING GIBBONS._]
Grinling Gibbons, whom Wren continually employed, was introduced to him
by Evelyn, who found the young man in a cottage at Deptford carving a
copy of Tintoretto's beautiful Crucifixion. Evelyn showed Wren the
carving and besought him to give some employment to a man of such
genius. This he gladly promised, and accordingly, many a little known
city church is adorned with carvings so light and so graceful that it is
hard to believe that they are cut out of wood.
Some works in stone Gibbons also did for Sir Christopher, but wood
appears to have been the material he preferred. In 1674 Wren had the
satisfaction of restoring Le Soeur's[137] beautiful statue of King
Charles to its place at Charing Cross. In the Rebellion it had been
overthrown by order of the Parliament, who directed that it should be
broken up. John Rivet, a brazier in Charing Cross, purchased it, hid it
in the vaults of S. Paul's, Covent Garden, and, to divert suspicion,
sold bronze medals and knife-handles, professedly made from its metal.
After the Restoration, he produced it intact, and, under Wren's
direction, it was placed on its present pedestal, which was carved by
Gibbons, whose handywork is easily recognised in the free, flowing lines
of the deeply-cut carving, much as time, aided by London atmosphere,
has eaten the very stone away. The poet Waller wrote an epigram[138] on
its restoration, which, besides its intrinsic merit, is interesting in
connection with the statue:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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