Dome

The south flank, showing niches; Gibbs was a pupil of Carlo Fontana in Rome. Gibbs was one of seven leading architects invited in 1720 to submit designs for the new Radcliffe Library in Oxford, although he initially lost the commission to Nicholas Hawksmoor. In the 1740s ill-health and concentration on the Radcliffe Library (or Camera) project (awarded to Gibbs on the death of Hawksmoor in 1736) led to a drop in his output. With the Radcliffe Library, after initially proposing an unadventurous but practical rectangular building, Gibbs was instructed to adopt and elaborate the domed rotunda form bequeathed by Hawksmoor. The result is Gibbs's finest building, again drawing on a wide range of sources and at once richer and more elegant than his predecessor's design but also less powerfully original. The word camera translates from Latin as "room" or "chamber." [Today it is part of the Bodleian Library, with books in the Camera and also in rooms below Radcliffe Square.] Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 6/26/2008)