Divide the inside of a dome into coffers that shrink in step with the meridians as they rise, so that their perspective deepens the dome and draws the eye to the light of the lantern.
Pier glasses, pictures and lights
Hang a tall glass on each pier between the windows, over a table, with branches for candles beside it; hang the pictures symmetrically about the middle of each wall, the largest over the chimneypiece and in the middle, pairs either side, and in a gallery close together in tiers; light the room from a chandelier in the middle and from the branches on the walls.
Between the windows, where the wall is in shadow, the glass reflected the light and the candles of the branches beside it; the pier table and glass were designed together and belonged to the architecture of the room, not to its movable furniture. Pictures were hung for the symmetry of the wall as much as for themselves, often frame to frame in tiers, matched in pairs about a great canvas in the middle.
Related rules
Light the climax of a Baroque interior (the altar or the dome) from windows the visitor cannot see, so that it seems to glow of itself.
Make the architrave round a door or window as wide as a sixth part of the opening’s breadth, and dress the openings of the principal floor more richly than those of the storeys above and below, with a frieze and cornice, and on the grandest a pediment.
architrave = ⅙ × width of the light
Break the architrave of a door or window with blocks of plain stone laid across it, alternately larger and smaller, and set a keystone in the middle of the head.
Light the hall over the front door with a fanlight: a half-round light with bars radiating like the ribs of a fan, or, after 1770, an elliptical one, often with narrow lights at the sides of the door.
Set urns or statues on the pedestals of a balustrade crowning a front, over the piers and the angles, so that the skyline is broken at regular intervals.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Pier glasses, pictures and lights”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/hang-and-glasses. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.