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Updated: May 22, 2025
A central pillar divides this lower arch, two pointed arches springing from its capital and leaving a spandrel between them, which is covered with modern sculpture. In the far distance may be distinguished the east wall of the Lady Chapel and its brilliant lancet lights.
"I'm afraid I don't know what a spandrel is," Christopher announced with appealing frankness. "And what marvel? How should you?" his companion replied pleasantly. "You have been such a good listener that I was forgetting you had not been brought up among clocks as I have been.
"In the last spandrel, between the façade at the head and that on the left, it will be well to place Angerona, the Goddess of Secrecy, which figure, coming within the same door of entrance, will admonish those who come out of the chamber to keep secret all that they have seen and heard, as is the duty of the servants of noblemen.
Blocks of masonry lie cheek by jowl with masses of the rough-hewn rock; fallen cavern vaults are heaped round fragments of fan-shaped spandrel and clustered column-shaft; the doors and windows of old pleasure-rooms are hung with ivy and wild fig for tapestry; winding staircases start midway upon the cliff, and lead to vacancy.
This, perchance, would not have happened if Bronzino had been in those parts, who was then working at the Imperiale, a place belonging to the Duke of Urbino, near Pesaro; which Bronzino, although he was sent for every day by Jacopo, nevertheless was not able to depart at his own pleasure, for the reason that, after he had executed a very beautiful naked Cupid on the spandrel of a vault in the Imperiale, and the cartoons for the others, Prince Guidobaldo, having recognized the young man's genius, ordained that his own portrait should be taken by him, and, seeing that he wished to be portrayed in some armour that he was expecting from Lombardy, Bronzino was forced to stay with that Prince longer than he could have wished.
"In the next spandrel, between the façade at the foot and that on the right hand, you shall place Brizo, the Goddess of prophecy and the interpretress of dreams.
The subjects in the separate panels are:—1. The Agony in the Garden; 2. Christ Bearing the Cross; 3. The Crucifixion; 4. The Resurrection; and 5. The Three Women at the Sepulchre. Above the reredos a broad spandrel left by two pointed arches springing from a central pier fills the upper part of the Norman arch. The pier itself is old, but the upper part is a restoration of Mr. Cottingham’s.
The soldiers of the bands breathe from their instruments music the most perfect and exquisite of its kind in the world; and as the procession takes the width of the Grand Canal in its magnificent course, soft crimson flushes play upon the old, weather-darkened palaces, and die tenderly away, giving to light and then to shadow the opulent sculptures of pillar, and arch, and spandrel, and weirdly illuminating the grim and bearded visages of stone that peer down from doorway and window.
The spandrel is covered with modern sculpture, as may be seen in the illustration. The subject is the Saviour in Majesty, the four evangelists holding scrolls; and below a figure of King Ethelbert.
For in the half spandrel wall between the first arch and the bank, they might have spied a small window, looking down on the sullen, silent gloom, foam flecked with past commotion, that crept languidly away from beneath.
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