King’s St Paul’s Cathedral Triptych is a masterful digital homage to the architectural grandeur and enduring cultural symbolism of Sir Christopher Wren’s 17th-century masterpiece. By distilling the cathedral’s baroque splendour into a modern, minimalist aesthetic, King juxtaposes the weight of history with the levity of contemporary visual language. The triptych format itself nods to the religious origins of such compositions, invoking Renaissance altarpieces while reimagining them through the lens of digital artistry.
The choice of color blocks—vivid red, stark white, and contemplative blue—offers a bold chromatic narrative. The red panel pulsates with vitality, evoking the fire of renewal that defined the cathedral’s construction after the Great Fire of London in 1666. It recalls T. S. Eliot’s poetic meditation on destruction and rebirth in The Four Quartets: “A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything).” The blue, conversely, conveys tranquility and eternity, qualities often ascribed to the divine. The white, anchoring the center, serves as a neutral fulcrum, representing purity, balance, and the unadorned truth of form.
The loose, gestural lines of King’s rendering strip St Paul’s of its ornamental details, highlighting its essential structure. This approach aligns with the modernist dictum of “less is more,” famously championed by architect Mies van der Rohe, but it also harkens back to Wren’s own belief in the harmonious relationship between geometry and divinity. The triptych’s repetition emphasizes the cathedral’s universality while subtly questioning the ways it is consumed—both as a sacred site and as an emblem of London’s identity.
This work reverberates with a dialogue between the past and the present, embodying what John Ruskin once wrote: “Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art.” In this triptych, St Paul’s Cathedral transcends time, becoming both icon and idea, as monumental as it is mutable.
