Sir John Ninian Comper III

     A shopping to trip to Cardiff the other week and quick visit to the church of St John the Baptist, Cardiff's remaining Medieval church. Nestling in the broad south aisle is this rather splendid altarpiece, the work of Sir John Ninian Comper. It dates from the second phase of his career when Comper blended Classical with the Gothic - this synthesis he called 'Unity by Inclusion'. It is a sort of a sublimation, a conclusion to the so called 'Battle of the Styles', that contest between Classical and Gothic that dominated the Mid Nineteen Century British architectural scene. This desire for a reconciliation in the sometimes-conflicting elements of Western culture is, I think, to be found also in the work of the Oxford Inklings: Tolkien, Lewis and Williams. It also occurs in the work of John Masefield and in particular in his evocative children's novel 'The Box of Delights', which I am currently re-reading during Advent, and in which Christianity is reconciled with the Pagan Gothic North. Anyway, this a rather a fine design, a little austere perhaps, a triptych with folding wings, the classical details being rathe Jacobean in quality. One feels that Comper was amongst so many other things attempting to create the sort of church furnishing that would have existed in Britain had the Reformation not veered so strongly towards the Reformed as it did under Edward VI. All this, however, is all somewhat spoiled by the lamentable absence of altar frontal. The current altar candlesticks are by George Pace - 'nough said.