George I of Great Britain
George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698 until his death in 1727. George was born in Hanover and inherited the titles and lands of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg from his father and uncles. A succession of European wars expanded his German domains during his lifetime, in 1708 he was ratified as prince-elector of Hanover. At the age of 54, after the death of his second cousin Anne, Queen of Great Britain, George ascended the British throne as the first monarch of the House of Hanover. Although over 50 Roman Catholics were closer to Anne by primogeniture, the Act of Settlement 1701 prohibited Catholics from inheriting the British throne. In reaction, Jacobites attempted to depose George and replace him with Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, but their attempts failed. During George's reign, the powers of the monarchy diminished and Britain began a transition to the modern system of cabinet government led by a prime minister.
Towards the end of his reign, actual political power was held by Robert Walpole, now recognised as Britain's first de facto prime minister. George died of a stroke on a trip to his native Hanover, he was the last British monarch to be buried outside the United Kingdom. George was born on 28 May 1660 in the city of Hanover in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire, he was the eldest son of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, his wife, Sophia of the Palatinate. Sophia was the granddaughter of King James I of England through Elizabeth of Bohemia. For the first year of his life, George was the only heir to the German territories of his father and three childless uncles. George's brother, Frederick Augustus, was born in 1661, the two boys were brought up together, their mother was absent for a year during a long convalescent holiday in Italy, but corresponded with her sons' governess and took a great interest in their upbringing more so upon her return. Sophia bore Ernest Augustus a daughter.
In her letters, Sophia describes George as a responsible, conscientious child who set an example to his younger brothers and sisters. By 1675 George's eldest uncle had died without issue, but his remaining two uncles had married, putting George's inheritance in jeopardy as his uncles' estates might pass to their own sons, should they have had any, instead of to George. George's father took him hunting and riding, introduced him to military matters. In 1679 another uncle died unexpectedly without sons, Ernest Augustus became reigning Duke of Calenberg-Göttingen, with his capital at Hanover. George's surviving uncle, George William of Celle, had married his mistress in order to legitimise his only daughter, Sophia Dorothea, but looked unlikely to have any further children. Under Salic law, where inheritance of territory was restricted to the male line, the succession of George and his brothers to the territories of their father and uncle now seemed secure. In 1682, the family agreed to adopt the principle of primogeniture, meaning George would inherit all the territory and not have to share it with his brothers.
The same year, George married his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, thereby securing additional incomes that would have been outside Salic laws. The marriage of state was arranged as it ensured a healthy annual income and assisted the eventual unification of Hanover and Celle, his mother was at first against the marriage because she looked down on Sophia Dorothea's mother, because she was concerned by Sophia Dorothea's legitimated status. She was won over by the advantages inherent in the marriage. In 1683, George and his brother, Frederick Augustus, served in the Great Turkish War at the Battle of Vienna, Sophia Dorothea bore George a son, George Augustus; the following year, Frederick Augustus was informed of the adoption of primogeniture, meaning he would no longer receive part of his father's territory as he had expected. It led to a breach between father and son, between the brothers, that lasted until Frederick Augustus's death in battle in 1690. With the imminent formation of a single Hanoverian state, the Hanoverians' continuing contributions to the Empire's wars, Ernest Augustus was made an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire in 1692.
George's prospects were now better than as the sole heir to his father's electorate and his uncle's duchy. Sophia Dorothea had a second child, a daughter named after her, in 1687, but there were no other pregnancies; the couple became estranged—George preferred the company of his mistress, Melusine von der Schulenburg, Sophia Dorothea, had her own romance with the Swedish Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck. Threatened with the scandal of an elopement, the Hanoverian court, including George's brothers and mother, urged the lovers to desist, but to no avail. According to diplomatic sources from Hanover's enemies, in July 1694 the Swedish count was killed with the connivance of George, his body thrown into the river Leine weighted with stones; the murder was claimed to have been committed by four of Ernest Augustus's courtiers, one of whom was paid the enormous sum of 150,000 thalers, about one hundred times the annual salary of the highest paid minister. Rumours supposed t
Reredos
A reredos is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a church. It includes religious images. A reredos can be made of stone, metal, ivory, or a combination of materials; the images may be painted, gilded, composed of mosaics, and/or embedded with niches for statues. Sometimes a tapestry is used, or other fabric such as velvet; the term reredos is sometimes confused with the term retable. While a reredos is placed on the floor behind an altar, a retable is placed either on the altar or behind and attached to the altar. In French, a reredos is called a retable. Reredos is derived through Middle English from the 14th century Anglo-Norman areredos, which in turn is from arere behind +dos back, from Latin dorsum; the term referred to an open hearth of a fireplace or a screen placed behind a table. Used in the 14th and 15th centuries, reredos had become nearly obsolete until revived in the 19th century. According to the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online, "A'retable' is distinct from a'reredos'.
Many altars have both a reredos and a retable." But this distinction may not always be observed. The retable may have become part of the reredos. For altars that are still against the wall, the retable sits on top of the altar, at the back when there is no reredos; the retable may hold candlesticks. The term reredos may be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular architecture, for example grand carved chimneypieces. Altarpiece Iconostasis Retablo Britannica
Wren Library
The Wren Library is the library of Trinity College in Cambridge. It was designed by Christopher Wren in 1676 and completed in 1695; the library is a single large room built over an open colonnade on the ground floor of Nevile's Court. The floor of the library proper within the upper storey lies several feet below the external division between the two storeys, reconciling the demands of use with the harmony of architectural proportion, it is credited as being one of the first libraries to be built with large windows to give comfortable light levels to aid readers. The book stacks are arranged in rows perpendicular to the walls under the intervals between the windows. At the end of each stack is a fine limewood carving by Grinling Gibbons, above these are plaster cast busts of notable writers through the ages. Other marble busts standing on plinths depict notable members of the college and are carved by Louis-François Roubiliac. A addition is a full size statue of Lord Byron carved by Bertel Thorvaldsen offered to Westminster Abbey for inclusion in Poets' Corner, but refused due to the poet's reputation for immorality.
On the east balustrade of the library's roof are four statues by Gabriel Cibber representing Divinity, Law and Mathematics. As part of the complex of buildings surrounding Nevile's Court, Great Court and New Court, the library is a Grade I listed building; the other library designed by Wren is Lincoln Cathedral Library. The library contains many notable rare books and manuscripts, many bequeathed by past members of the college. Included in the collection are Isaac Newton's first edition copy of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica with handwritten notes for the second edition. Isaac Newton's Notebook An eighth-century copy of the Epistles of St Paul About 1250 medieval manuscripts including the great 12th-century Eadwine Psalter from Christ Church, the 13th-century Anglo-Norman Trinity Apocalypse and the 15th-century Trinity Carol Roll. A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner; the Capell collection of early Shakespeare editions A collection of autograph poems by John Milton A 14th-century manuscript of The Vision of Piers Plowman Several works printed by William Caxton, including the first book printed in English and the first dated printed book produced in England Several notebooks written by Ludwig Wittgenstein Handwritten notes by Robert Oppenheimer describing the "Trinity" atomic bomb test in New Mexico, U.
S. Ramanujan's "lost notebook" 1620 edition of William Morgan's translation of the bible into Welsh In early 2014 the library began a major programme of digitisation. To date, over 160 of the 1250 medieval manuscripts owned by the College have been digitised and are available to read online. A link to the list of digitised manuscripts can be found in the external links below; the library is open to the public. There is no admission charge for the Wren Library. Trinity College pages for the Wren LibraryThe online catalogue of digitised manuscripts in the Wren Library. Trinity College one of "The 20 Most Spellbinding University Libraries In The World" Independent Newspaper
Cassiobury House
Cassiobury House was a country house in Cassiobury Park, England. It was the ancestral seat of the Earls of Essex. A Tudor building, dating from 1546 for Sir Richard Morrison, it was remodelled in the 17th and 19th centuries and demolished in 1927; the surrounding Cassiobury Park was turned into the main public open space for Watford. St Albans Abbey claimed rights to the manor of Cashio, which included Watford, dating from a grant by King Offa of Mercia in AD 793; when King Henry VIII of England dissolved the monasteries in 1539, Watford was divided from Cashio, the King made himself lord of the manor of Cassiobury. In 1546, he granted the manor to Sir Richard Morrison, who started to build Cassiobury House in the extensive gardens, but had not made much progress by 1553, when he went into exile abroad; the estate grounds were much larger than they are today, reaching as far as North Watford and southwards to Moor Park. After the death of his father in 1556, Sir Charles Morrison continued building and completed the mansion, which had 56 rooms, a long gallery, stables, a dairy, a brewhouse.
Sir Charles was succeeded by Sir Charles Morrison, 1st Baronet. In 1627 Sir Charles Morrison's daughter, married Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham and the estate passed into the Capel family; the Capels were settled at Little Hadham in Hertfordshire, but after the marriage they became associated with Cassiobury. Arthur Capel was a supporter of the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. Cassiobury had been sequestrated by Parliament. Arthur Capell's widow Lady Elizabeth Capell petitioned Parliament for Cassiobury to be returned to her on. After Capell's execution, his son Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, inherited his estates. Following the Restoration of the Monarchy, the younger Arthur Capell rose to become Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the reign of Charles II, he moved the Capell family seat from Hadham to Cassiobury, commissioning a lavish reconstruction of his father's Tudor mansion from the architect Hugh May. The new house was built c.1677–80 and laid out on an "H" ground-plan, popular during that period, incorporating the original north-west wing.
As he had done at Windsor Castle, May teamed up with the wood carver of the day, Grinling Gibbons, the painter Antonio Verrio to create a sumptuous interior. Capell was an ambitious courtier, by fitting out his mansion with richly decorated state rooms in the style of Windsor, he hoped to attract a visit from the King to Cassiobury — he was not successful; the diarist John Evelyn visited Cassiobury on 16 April 1680 "On the earnest invitation of the Earl of Essex," and dedicated an insightful passage to the merits and disadvantages of the house and grounds, describing some of the interior fittings and decorations. Among the internal decorations was the ornately carved main staircase, a work attributed to Gibbons which featured flower and fruit formations, oak leaves and acorns, acanthus flowers and foliation, bursting seed pods and pine-cones on the bannister finials; the staircase was built of oak wood, with the balustrade and decorations and executed in pine and ash. The park and gardens were laid out by Moses Cook who devised woodland walks and avenues, provided "an excellent collection of the choicest fruits".
The gardeners George London and Charles Bridgeman worked at Cassiobury. Between 1672 and 1720 an avenue of 296 lime trees was planted, linking the gardens to Whippendell Wood. Remnants of this can still be seen today; the building of Little Cassiobury dates from this period and still exists in Hempstead Road, Watford. The Grand Union Canal dates from the late eighteenth century; the 4th Earl was one of the noblemen on the board of the canal company. The 5th Earl of Essex arrived at Cassiobury in 1799 and commissioned James Wyatt to add a Gothic exterior and an orangery. Most of the rebuilding was finished by 1805; the new house comprised a large number of rooms, the main ones being the Winter Drawing Room, with family portraits by Peter Lely and Van Dyck. The furniture of the Best Drawing Room was said to be "of the latest fashion and displays superior taste". Another spectacular room was the State Bedroom, with blue and white furnishings, a Gobelin tapestry, a ceiling in blue and gilt. In 1816, the socialite Frances Calvert visited and commented that Cassiobury was "a pretty house, more full of comforts and pretty things than any house I saw", that the flower gardens were the "most complete in England".
Humphry Repton was commissioned to landscape the park. A number of lodges and other buildings for the estate were constructed; these were designed by Jeffry Wyatville. Only one now survives: Cassiobury Lodge, in Gade Avenue, "... the most elaborate in execution — its whole exterior being covered or cased with sticks of various sizes split in two", wrote a Victorian visitor. At this time the park comprised 693 acres, the Ho
Baroque
The Baroque is a ornate and extravagant style of architecture, painting and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century. It preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles, it was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, exuberant detail, deep colour and surprise to achieve a sense of awe; the style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome spread to France, northern Italy and Portugal to Austria and southern Germany. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and central Europe until the mid to late 18th century; the English word baroque comes directly from the French, may have been adapted from the Portuguese term barroco, a flawed pearl. Both words are related to the Spanish term berruca; the term did not describe a style of music or art.
Prior to the 18th century, the French baroque and Portuguese barroco were terms related to jewelry, An example from 1531 uses the term to describe pearls in an inventory of Charles V's treasures. The word appears in a 1694 edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, which describes baroque as "only used for pearls that are imperfectly round." A 1728 Portuguese dictionary describes barroco as relating to a "coarse and uneven pearl."The French term for the artistic style may have had roots in the medieval Latin word baroco, a philosophical term, invented in the 13th century by scholastics to describe a complicated type of syllogism, or logical argument. In the 16th century the philosopher Michel de Montaigne associated the term'baroco' with "Bizarre and uselessly complicated." In the 18th century, the term was used to describe music, was not flattering. In an anonymous satirical review of the première of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie in October 1733, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734, the critic wrote that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was unsparing with dissonances changed key and meter, speedily ran through every compositional device.
In 1762, Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française wrote that the term could be used figuratively to describe something "irregular, bizarre or unequal."Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a musician and composer as well as philosopher, wrote in 1768 in the Encyclopédie: "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, the movement limited, it appears that term comes from the word'baroco' used by logicians."In 1788, the term was defined by Quatremère de Quincy in the Encyclopédie Méthodique as "an architectural style, adorned and tormented". The terms "style baroque" and "musique baroque" appeared in Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française in 1835. By the mid-19th century, art critics and historians had adopted the term as a way to ridicule post-Renaissance art; this was the sense of the word as used in 1855 by the leading art historian Jacob Burkhardt, who wrote that baroque artists "despised and abused detail" because they lacked "respect for tradition."Alternatively, a derivation from the name of the Italian painter Federico Barocci has been suggested.
In 1888, the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin published the first serious academic work on the style, Renaissance und Barock, which described the differences between the painting and architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque. The Baroque style of architecture was a result of doctrines adopted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545–63, in response to the Protestant Reformation; the first phase of the Counter-Reformation had imposed a severe, academic style on religious architecture, which had appealed to intellectuals but not the mass of churchgoers. The Council of Trent decided instead to appeal to a more popular audience, declared that the arts should communicate religious themes with direct and emotional involvement. Lutheran Baroque art developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists. Baroque churches were designed with a large central space, where the worshippers could be close to the altar, with a dome or cupola high overhead, allowing light to illuminate the church below.
The dome was one of the central symbolic features of baroque architecture illustrating the union between the heavens and the earth, The inside of the cupola was lavishly decorated with paintings of angels and saints, with stucco statuettes of angels, giving the impression to those below of looking up at heaven. Another feature of baroque churches are the quadratura. Quadratura paintings of Atlantes below the cornices appear to be supporting the ceiling of the church. Unlike the painted ceilings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, which combined different scenes, each with its own perspective, to be looked at one at a time, the Baroque ceiling paintings were created so the viewer on the floor of the church would see the entire ceiling in correct perspective, as if the figures were real; the interiors of baroque churches became more and more ornate in the High Baroque, an
Pietro da Cortona
Pietro da Cortona was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture, he was an important designer of interior decorations. He was born Pietro Berrettini, but is known by the name of his native town of Cortona in Tuscany, he worked in Rome and Florence. He is best known for his frescoed ceilings such as the vault of the salone or main salon of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and carried out extensive painting and decorative schemes for the Medici family in Florence and for the Oratorian fathers at the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome, he painted numerous canvases. Only a limited number of his architectural projects were built but nonetheless they are as distinctive and as inventive as those of his rivals. Berrettini was born into a family of artisans and masons, in Cortona a town in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, he trained in painting in Florence under Andrea Commodi, but soon he departed for Rome at around 1612/3, where he joined the studio of Baccio Ciarpi.
He was involved in fresco decorations at the Palazzo Mattei in 1622-3 under the direction of Agostino Ciampelli and Cardinal Orsini had commissioned from him an Adoration of the Shepherds for San Salvatore in Lauro. In Rome, he had encouragement from many prominent patrons. According to Cortona's biographers his gifted copy of Raphael's Galatea fresco brought him to the attention of Marcello Sacchetti, papal treasurer during the Barberini papacy; such contacts helped him gain an early major commission in Rome, a fresco decoration in the church of Santa Bibiana, being renovated under the direction of Bernini. In 1626, the Sacchetti family engaged Cortona to paint three large canvases of The Sacrifice of Polyxena, The Triumph of Bacchus, The Rape of the Sabines, to paint a series of frescoes in the Villa Sacchetti at Castelfusano, near Ostia, using a team that included the young Andrea Sacchi. In the Sacchetti orbit, he met Pope Urban VIII and Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the papal nephew, their patronage of Cortona provided him with ample scope to demonstrate his abilities as a painter of frescoes and canvases.
Fresco cycles were numerous in Cortona's Rome. In 1633, Pope Urban VIII commissioned from Cortona a large fresco painting for the main salon ceiling of the Barberini family palace, it was completed six years following Cortona's influential visit to northern Italy where he would have seen at first hand perspectival works by Paolo Veronese and the colour palette of Titian. Cortona's huge Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power marks a watershed in Baroque painting. Following the architecture of the room, he created the painted illusion of an open airy architectural framework against which figures are situated seen'al di sotto in su' coming into the room itself or floating far above it; the ornamented architectural framework forms five compartments. The central and most significant part celebrates the glorification of the reign of Urban VIII in a light filled scene populated with allegorical figures and Barberini family emblems; the illusion of spatial extension through paint, the grandiose theme and the skill of execution could only astonish and impress the visitor.
However, Cortona's panegyric trompe-l'œil extravaganzas may be less popular in a world familiar with minimalism and such like, yet they are precursors of the sunny figures and cherubim infested with rococo excesses. They contrast markedly with the darker naturalism prominent in Caravaggisti works and with the classicising compositions by painters such as Domenichino and Andrea Sacchi, remind us that Baroque painting could be grand in an epic manner and exuberant in spirit. Cortona had been patronized by the Tuscan community in Rome, hence it was not surprising when he was passing through Florence in 1637, that he should be asked by Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici to paint a series of frescoes intended to represent Ovid's Four Ages of Man in the small Sala della Stufa, a room in the Palazzo Pitti; the first two frescoes represented the "ages" of silver. In 1641, he was recalled to paint the'Bronze Age' and'Iron Age' frescoes, it is said he was guided in the formulation of the allegorical designs by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger.
He thus began work on the decoration of the grand-ducal reception rooms on the first floor of the Palazzo Pitti, now part of the Palatine Gallery. In these five Planetary Rooms, the hierarchical sequence of the deities is based on Ptolomeic cosmology; these ornate ceilings with frescoes and elaborate stucco work celebrate the Medici lineage and the bestowal of virtuous leadership. Pietro left Florence in 1647 to return to Rome, his pupil and collaborator, Ciro Ferri, was left to complete the cycle by the 1660s. For a number of years, Cortona was involved for decades in the decoration of the ceiling frescoes in the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova in Rome, a work not finished until 1665. Other frescoes are in Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona. In 1660, he executed The Stoning of Saint Stephen for the church of San Ambrogio della Massima in Rome; the work hangs in the Hermitage. Towards the end of his life he devoted much of his time to architecture
St Paul's, Covent Garden
St Paul's Church is a church located in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 9ED. It was designed by Inigo Jones as part of a commission for the 4th Earl of Bedford in 1631 to create "houses and buildings fit for the habitations of Gentlemen and men of ability"; as well as being the parish church of Covent Garden, the church has gained the nickname of "the actors' church" by a long association with the theatre community. Completed in 1633, St Paul's was the first new church to be built in London since the Reformation, its design and the layout of the square have been attributed to Inigo Jones since the 17th century, although firm documentary evidence is lacking. According to an repeated story, recorded by Horace Walpole, Lord Bedford asked Jones to design a simple church "not much better than a barn", to which the architect replied "Then you shall have the handsomest barn in England"; the building is described by Sir John Summerson as "a study in the Vitruvian Tuscan Order" and "almost an archaeological exercise".
The description of a Tuscan or Etruscan-style temple by Vitruvius, which Jones follows in this building, reflects the early forms of Roman temple, which continued Etruscan architecture, though quite what Vitruvius intended by his account has divided modern scholars. It has been seen as a work of deliberate primitivism: the Tuscan order is associated by Palladio with agricultural buildings. In 1630, the 4th Earl of Bedford was given permission to demolish buildings on an area of land he owned north of the Strand, redevelop it; the result was the first formal square in London. The new buildings were classical in character. At the west end was a church, linked to two identical houses; the south side was left open. Work on the church was completed in 1633, at a cost to the Bedford estate of £4,886, but it was not consecrated until 1638 due to a dispute between the earl and the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, it remained a chapel within the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields until 1645, when Covent Garden was made a separate parish and the church dedicated to St. Paul.
In 1789 there was a major restoration of the church, under the direction of the architect Thomas Hardwick. Six years in September 1795, the church was burnt out by a fire, accidentally started by workmen on the roof. A survey of the damage found that the outer walls were still structurally sound, but that the portico would have to be reconstructed, it is unclear. Having been restored once more, again under Hardwick's supervision, the church was reconsecrated on 1 August 1798. Despite the destruction, the parish records were saved, as was the pulpit — the work of Grinling Gibbons; the puritan Thomas Manton ministered from the pulpit of St Paul's until the Great Ejection. On 23 September 1662 Simon Patrick Bishop of Ely, was preferred to the rectory of St. Paul’s where he served during the plague; the first known victim of the 1665–1666 outbreak of the Plague in England, Margaret Ponteous, was buried in the churchyard on 12 April 1665. The east end, facing the piazza, is faced in stone, with a massive portico, its boldly-projecting pediment supported by two columns and two piers.
There were three doorways behind the portico. The other two were blocked up in the 19th century; the main entrance to the church is through the plainer west front, which has a pediment, but no portico. William Prynne, writing in 1638 said that it was intended to have the altar at the west end, but pressure from the church hierarchy led to the imposition of the traditional orientation; the earliest existing detailed description, dating from 1708, says that the exterior was not of bare brick, but rendered with stucco. In 1789 it was decided to case the walls in Portland stone as part of a major programme of renovation, which Thomas Hardwick was chosen to supervise. At the same time the tiled roof was replaced with slate, the dormer windows, added in the 1640s, were removed, the archways flanking the church of stuccoed brick, were replaced with stone replicas; when Hardwick's stone facing was removed from the church in 1888, it was found to be a thin covering less than three inches thick, poorly bonded to the brick.
The building was reclad in the present unrendered red brick. There were six or seven steps leading up to the portico, but these disappeared as the level of the Piazza was raised over the years. By 1823 there were only two steps visible, none by 1887; the arches at the side of the portico were widened and raised during a restoration of 1878–82 by Henry Clutton, The 9th Duke of Bedford's architect. Clutton removed the bell-turret over the western pediment; the interior is a single space, undivided by columns. The eastern third was marked out as a chancel by means of the floor being raised by one step; the level was raised further during alterations by William Butterfield in 1871–72. The church was built without galleries. Hardwick included them in his rebuilding, the western one remains today. St Paul's connection with the theatre began as early as 1663 with the establishment of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was further assured in 1723 with the opening of Covent Garden Theatre, now the Royal Opera House.
On 9 May 1662, Samuel Pepys noted in his diary the first "Italian puppet play" under the portico — the first recorded performance of "Punch and Judy", a fact commemorated by the annual MayFayre service in May. The portico of St Paul's was the setting for the first scene of Shaw's Pygmalion, the play, lat
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