HARDOUIN-MANSART AND WREN

variety. The lantern, too, is at least as bizarre as Mansart's. And as for
the facade of St. Paul's, begun in 1685, it is, with the coupled columns
which Wren (just as Hardouin-Mansart) took over from Perrault's
Louvre facade, and the two fantastic turrets on the sides (designed
after 1700), a decidedly Baroque composition. The side elevations
are dramatic, though of a secular, palace-like effect. The windows

87. SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN: ST. PAUL*S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, 1675-1710.
fc
have even a framing of sham-perspective niches of the S. Carlo and
Palazzo Barberini type (see pi. LXIV). Inside there is a poignant
contrast between the firmness of every part and the spatial dynamics
of the whole. The dome rests on diagonally pkced piers with
colossal niches hollowed out. Niches also set the outer walls of the
aisles and choir aisles into an undulating motion. With a similar
effect windows are cut into die tunnel-vaults and saucer domes of
choir and nave. Wren's style in churches and palaces is Palkdian, no
doubt, but it is a Baroque version of Classicism. Such city churches
as the ingeniously multiform St. Stephens, Walbrook (1672-87,
pi. LXXXDC and fig. 88), show this especially clearly.
To analyse its ground plan is almost as hard as to analyse Vier-
zehnheiligen. Yet its expression is of cool clarity. Outside it is a plain
rectangle as silent about the interior surprises as Vierzehnheiligen.
Inside its centre is a spacious gently rising saucer dome resting on
eight arches supported by nothing but twelve slender columns. The
technical achievement is as remarkable as the effortless lightness of
appearance. The twelve columns form a square, and four arches
171