Untold lives blog

For tourists and locals alike, St Paul’s Cathedral is a key coordinate on London’s cultural map. This venerable bone-grey landmark was the venue for the famously ill-fated royal wedding of Charles and Diana, for Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II’s Jubilee celebrations and the funerals of three national treasures: Nelson, Wellington and Churchill.

Daniel Havell after John Gendall, South-East View of St Paul’s Cathedral, published London, 1818, aquatint and etching with hand-colouring, 424 x 528 mm, British Library, London, Maps.K.Top.23.35.w.

J Mérignot after Augustus Pugin, Funeral Procession of the late Lord Viscount Nelson, from the Admiralty to St Paul’s, London, published London 1806, aquatint and etching with hand-colouring, 412 x 502 mm, British Library, London, Maps.K.Top.23.35.s.

It was 318 years ago today that St Paul’s Cathedral re-opened to Londoners after a major revamp. The Great Fire of 1666 reduced the existing medieval Church to cinders, and it was decided that a new building should replace it. Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), England’s foremost baroque architect, was appointed to the task.

Sir Christopher Wren, Design for the Cupola of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 1623-1732, pen and brown ink over pencil, 213 x 245 mm, British Museum, London.

When the new St Paul’s was consecrated for use on 2nd December 1697, critics both praised and disapproved of its architect’s vision. One commentator proclaimed upon witnessing the edifice that ‘without, within, below, above, the eye is filled with unrestrained delight’, whilst another denounced it as worryingly Continental: ‘There was an air of Popery about the gilded capitals, the heavy arches...They were un-familiar, un-English’.

This was a criticism very much of its time. Britain, in the mid to late seventeenth century, was seized by anti-Catholic sentiment. Following the turmoil of the Restoration, rumours of ‘Popish plots’ abounded. Only 9 years prior to the opening of St Paul’s the Scotch Catholic King James II had been deposed for his faith. Wren’s architectural style, the baroque, was seen by the staunchly Protestant as too Italianate and thus too Catholic. For some, the new Cathedral just wasn’t austere or Anglican enough. Daniel Defoe, on the other hand, criticised Wren for the ‘Protestant plainness’ of his design and wondered why he hadn’t incorporated a ‘circular Piazza’ in the style of St Peter’s at the Vatican.

St Paul’s opened on a Thanksgiving day, to mark the very recent signing of a treaty between Protestant allied nations and France. Despite the optimistic inaugural ceremonies, the British monarch – the unequivocally Protestant William of Orange – was unable to attend. His ministers suspected Jacobite agents loyal to James II to be lurking in the crowds with murderous intent.

Johann Sebastian Müller, A North-West View of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, published London 1753, etching and engraving, 260 x 403 mm, British Library, London, Maps.K.Top.23.35.q.

The British Library houses much material related to St Paul’s Cathedral and to Sir Christopher Wren. The Cathedral is depicted in prints and drawings aplenty in the King’s Topographical Collection, and there are original church designs by the architect as well as a rare copy of his radical proposals for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (Maps.K.Top.20.19.3.).

To commemorate the anniversary of the Cathedral’s opening, I have chosen a picture of St Paul’s which, at first glance, can’t readily be seen. Its image has been skilfully painted onto the fore-edge of a book, and only comes into view when the pages of the text block are fanned in a certain way.

The Holy Bible, ed. Thomas Wilson and the Revered Clement Crutwell, 3 vols, (Bath: R. Crutwell, 1785), C.188.c.17.

 The Holy Bible, ed. Thomas Wilson and the Revered Clement Crutwell, 3 vols, (Bath: R. Crutwell, 1785), C.188.c.17.

This book is one part of a three-volume luxury edition of the Holy Bible, published in 1785 (C.188.c.17.). Each volume is embellished with a fore-edge painting; the other two show Solomon’s Temple and Arley Hall in Lancashire. Arley was the seat of John Johnson, a coal-mining landowner, who presented the decorated Bibles as a wedding gift to his daughter-in-law, Mary, in 1818. An inscription in one of the volumes reveals John’s personal message to Mary as he wished her ‘his most affectionate regards’ for ‘Peace, Comfort and Happiness’ in married life.

The artist who painted this remarkable miniaturised St Paul’s was Bartholomew Frye, a German bookbinder who settled in England in the 1790s. Frye would have clamped the book in a vice with its pages fanned, rendered the view in watercolour, and once dry brushed a veil of gilt over the scene to conceal the image underneath. The book was also tooled with hazelnut calf leather, gilt garlands and Greek key patterns for extra adornment.

 Many more books with hidden fore-edge paintings can be found at the British Library; you can look them up here in the Database of Bookbindings.

Alice Rylance-Watson, Research Curator, Transforming Topography