Who was Sir Christopher Wren?

Personable, yet naturally reserved, 'that miracle of a youth, Mr Christopher Wren' not only designed many of our most notable monuments, but also an artificial eye. Three centuries on, Clive Aslet considers the man behind the architecture

- Clive Aslet

ONE of the finest portrait busts carved in England during the late 17th century can be seen in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Made in 1673, it shows Christopher Wren at the age of 40, with rich curly locks tumbling to his shoulders and a loose shirt beneath the classical robe in which he's swathed. The features are alert, mobile, determined; high eyebrows suggest scepticism, with Wren's somewhat bulging eyes seemingly trained on a distant object that only he can see. Edward Pierce, the stone carver and mason who made this tour de force, perhaps after a lost French original, worked with Wren on several projects and must have been in his company many times. He knew his subject well and brilliantly captures the quality for which Wren has always been known: genius.

Every contemporary description of Wren confirms the evidence of the bust. Although diminutive in stature, he was a handsome man, whose dazzling gifts were recognised from childhood. As an adolescent at Oxford, he would be called 'that miracle of a youth Mr Christopher Wren'. Unlike some other prominent figures in the Royal Society-the uncouth Isaac Newton, the distinctly peculiar Robert Hooke he was invariably courteous and frequently to be seen in Hooke's company in the coffee houses around Whitehall, where he lived and worked.