50 CONTEXT 176 : JUNE 2023 His work in repairing buildings is more complex. His enthusiasm for George Gilbert Scott’s All Souls, Haley Hill, and his belief that the condemned spire could be saved, proved right. Working with Arup to design an internal brick lining, he saved what Scott himself had described as ‘on the whole, my best church’. Buttress was as vigorous in his approach to stone repairs and replacement as he was in design, sometimes leading him into controversy. Difficulties at Chichester are covered carefully by Powell, and well illustrated. Similarly, the renewal of work at Westminster Abbey is shown in photographs and drawings. There were many opportunities for gifted sculptors and carvers, and Buttress rebuilt many features using Portland stone, replacing earlier and softer Bath-stone details. We are lucky that Buttress, with his deep knowledge and understanding of historic buildings, was able to do so much. He could be described as ‘the last of the Victorians’: an inadequate description but one which is a cause for regret, as the disciplines of archaeology, art history and architecture diverge. We are unlikely to see another such confident and creative architect A pen-and-ink capriccio by Donald Buttress of the six ancient cathedral churches of Wales (Llandaff, St Asaph, St Davids, Bangor and Newport) in an imaginary medieval enclosure. working on our cathedrals, but Kenneth Powell’s book has made sure that his story will be available to inspire future generations. Jane Kennedy is a former cathedral architect. Meanings of marble Painting in Stone: architecture and the poetics of marble from antiquity to the enlightenment Fabio Barry, Yale University Press, 2022, 432 pages, 214 colour and 116 blackand-white illustrations, paperback, ISBN 978 0 300248 1 73, £35 Fabio Barry’s book is about marble architecture, but his approach is novel. The clue is in the subtitle: ‘the Poetics of Marble’. This is not so much a history of marble in architecture as a history of the meanings of marble. Marble is usually associated with prestige, ostentation and imperial power; porphyry was reserved for emperors. Barry, however, finds a much more capacious range of meanings by considering contemporary commentaries, in particular the literature of the ekphrasis – rhetorical exercises in which words were used to describe the appearance of a work of art or architecture, to rival and surpass the purely visual qualities of the original work. With marble, what often interests the writers of these ekphrastic poems is light, sheen and glitter, rather than the marble itself, and they make no distinction between marble and other substances that possess these qualities. Accordingly, Barry includes other marble-like materials in his survey: glass, gems, hardstones, rock crystal, alabaster, stones that resemble marble such as Purbeck limestone, even faux marble (surfaces painted with veining to resemble marble). Barry presents us with a succession of buildings ranging from ancient Mesopotamian temples, through Byzantine churches to renaissance and baroque chapels, interpreting them through lavish quotations from the literature. He draws out three overarching themes from these texts. The first concerns the seeming ability of polished marble to transmit light. Buildings widely spaced in date and location – Sumerian ziggurats, Greek temples and Christian churches – were all described as radiant and shimmering, filled with light that evoked heavenly spheres where gods or god-like rulers dwelt. Barry instances the inner chamber of the Parthenon, with shining walls of Pentelic marble, and daylight filtering through
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