The Dome Of St. Paul’s Cathedral

458 Words2 Pages
When I first walked into St. Paul’s Cathedral, it did not strike me as such an impressive architecture, probably because of the many cathedrals I have seen throughout my Europe trip. It does not have a romantic tragic story like the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, nor does it have an extraordinary external design as the Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano). However, when I saw the inner dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, I was stunned by its artistic design. As one look up into the dome from inside of the cathedral, instead of looking into the lantern that could be seen from outside of the cathedral, one’s sight ends at the top of the brick cone, which is designed and painted with architectural details, allowing the illusion of looking into a cylindrical spacing, raising the ceiling of the dome higher for the sight of people. Under the greatly designed top of the inner dome is the Golden Gallery. When the cathedral was first built, Sir Christopher Wren’s son intended to decorate the interior of the dome with mosaics. However, during that time and under that cultural background, this type of art was considered as new and challenging, and was eventually rejected by the society. Therefore, this proposal was replaced by the paintings that illustrate the life of St Paul, which are completed by Sir James Thornhill. Instead of simply separating the different stories with drawn frames like many cathedrals did, Thornhill cleverly used the shape of the dome and the technique of shading to provide a pseudo morph of stereoscopic arches. Within each arch lies the important scenes of St. Paul, as if looking through a window and having the story replay in front of us. Only until 1864, the idea of mosaics that was once criticized was being reconsidered again for the decoration of the eight spandrels under the dome. The creator of the Wellington memorial in the Cathedral was commissioned to
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