Marble Colonnade Inside a Manchester Neoclassical Rotunda

28 September 2019 · Manchester

Four sienna marble columns rise through the frame in a low-angle upshot, their gilded brass capitals meeting a curved entablature that sweeps toward the rotunda dome. The polished surfaces catch the light differently at each column — warm amber at the nearest shaft, cooler and more distant as the colonnade recedes. A partial inscription curves along the dome's rim, lending the interior its civic weight. The columns do the structural work and the decorative work simultaneously, which is exactly the neoclassical proposition.