The One with Sir Christopher Wren

105. Title & Author: Sir Christopher Wren by Glorney Bolton (191 pages)
Genre: Nonfiction--Art History
Completed: 26 July 2009

Summary & Review:
The dome of St. Paul's has majestically loomed over London for centuries and it almost singly occupied the mind of one man for more than 35 years. That man was the English architect Sir Christopher Wren. Bolton examines the architectural works of Wren through the construction of St. Paul's and how the process of building that single structure epitomized the obstacles, challenges, successes, and professional characteristics of Wren.

I've recently read a book entitled Christopher Wren, another one entitled Wren, and now Sir Christopher Wren. Creative titles. This was my favorite of the three, though. It was a very interesting look into the mind and personality of Wren through the lens of St. Paul's. The decades long process that Wren was able to complete during his lifetime (which I'm really happy he did since so many masterpieces, like St. Peter's for Michelangelo, were never viewed by their creators) was filled with challenges and problems that Wren's able and nimble mind overcame through ingenious innovations. As Bolton so excellently put it, "He was like an English Leonardo." (60)

Rating: 8.0

The One with Wren

104. Title & Author: Wren by Margaret Whinney (205 pages)
Genre: Nonfiction—Art History
Completed: 20 July 2009

Summary & Review:
Whinney examines the various architectural works of Sir Christopher Wren including his few private residences, his Royal palaces, various secular buildings, and his numerous City Churches. The largest single chunk of the book is devoted to Wren’s crowning achievement: St. Paul’s.

As I was reading the author’s acknowledgment in the last book I just read about Wren, Christopher Wren by Kerry Downes (#102), I noticed that he thanked a Margaret Whinney for her help even though she was writing her own volume on Wren, and sure enough in this book Whinney thanked Downes for his help on her book. Not only were these books written at essentially the exact same time, but they covered the same material. Of the two, I must admit I preferred Whinney’s. This book was more logically organized which lent a flow and order to the material that was missing in Downes’. Also, I found her analyses to be both more interesting and more insightful.

Here was a great passage which I think aptly and fairly sums up the life and career of Wren: “Finally, is must never be forgotten that he could not draw on the apparently endless financial resources of Louis XIV or of the Roman Church. Almost all his buildings were hampered for lack of money. And it may well be that that very ability to compromise, to seek and find another solution and to get the work done, which was part of his strength as a man, was not always to the advantage of his architecture. Had he possessed the power and the arrogance of a Bernini, and the flawless taste of a François Mansart, many of his buildings would never have been accomplished. He is an uneven architect, but St Paul’s and Greenwich" - and I would add St. Stephen, Walbrook - "surely entitle him to a high place even among his seventeenth-century contemporaries, and without his City churches and his brick and stone palaces England would be much the poorer.” (203)

Rating: 7.5