The bust, of Christopher Wren, is carved from
Portland stone and is about 150% life-size. Great care has been taken with the
carving and the resemblance between the bust and drawings of Wren, made at the
time of his life, leaves no doubt as to who it is. The bust shows Wren wearing a
wig and looking slightly to his right.
The sculptor was Tim Crawley and he has this to say about the bust on his
website (visit
link):
"The new Guildhall Art Gallery houses the
substantial collection of paintings owned by the City of London. The Portland
stone building was designed with an open loggia opening onto Guildhall Yard with
four shallow niches on the rear wall. New portrait busts were commissioned
commemorating individuals particularly associated with the history of the City:
Cromwell, Wren, Shakespeare and Pepys. The project involved researching the
appearance of each figure as the basis for designing new busts, which were
produced at one and a half times life size, a scale demanded by the
architectural location."
The Spartacus website (visit
link) tells us:
"Christopher Wren, the son of the Dean of
Windsor, and nephew of Dr. Mathew Wren, the Bishop of Norwich, was born in 1632.
As his father was the king's chaplain, Christopher spent his early life in
Windsor Castle. As a child he played with the king's son who later became
Charles II.
Christopher was an intelligent boy and did
very well at school. He was particularly interested in mathematics and science,
and by the age of seventeen had made several inventions. These included an
instrument that wrote in the dark, a weather clock, a pneumatic engine and a new
deaf and dumb language.
At Oxford University Wren developed a
reputation as a brilliant scientist. He carried out a series of experiments that
was to prove very important for health care. For example, he showed how it was
possible to send people into a deep sleep by injecting them with opium. This
helped doctors who wanted to carry out long operations. Wren himself used this
system to remove a spleen from a dog. He also successfully used a syringe to
transfer blood from one dog to another.
In 1657 Wren was appointed as professor of
astronomy at Gresham College in London. Wren became interested in the laws of
motion. He carried out several experiments on this subject, and when Isaac
Newton developed the theory of gravity he was quick to point out that he owed a
great deal to the work of Wren.
Wren joined a group of mathematicians,
scientists and scholars that met to discuss new ideas and in 1662 Charles II
granted them a charter to establish the Royal Society of London for Promoting
Natural Knowledge.
When Wren was a student, Christopher Wren
read a book entitled On Architecture. The book had been written by a Roman
architect called Vitruvius in the first century AD. After reading On
Architecture, Wren developed a desire to design buildings similar to those built
by the Romans. In 1663 Wren visited Rome and was particularly impressed with the
Theatre of Marcellus. Although the theatre was in ruins, Wren was able to
inspect drawings that revealed what the theatre looked like when it was first
built. When Wren was later asked to design a new theatre in Oxford, he decided
to use the information that he had gained when studying the Theatre of Marcellus
in Rome.
On 2nd September, 1666, the Great Fire of
London destroyed a large area of the city. Charles II had to appoint someone to
take charge of rebuilding London. After much thought the king gave the job to
his childhood friend, Christopher Wren. This included the task of building over
fifty new churches in London.
Wren was also commissioned to design and
build St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's took thirty-five years to build. The most
dramatic aspect of St. Paul's was its great dome. It was the second largest dome
ever built (the largest was St. Peter's Basilica in Rome). Both domes were based
on the one in the Pantheon built by the ancient Romans.
Wren was sixty-six years old when he
finished St. Paul's. Other buildings designed by Wren included the Royal
Exchange, College of Physicians, Chelsea Hospital, the Royal Naval College,
Custom House and the Drury Lane Theatre. When Christopher Wren died in 1723 he
became the first person to be buried in St. Paul's Cathedral."