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Art in the Library

Sections

Carleton Winslow

Tympanum (1924)
 

library tympanum

The tympanum was designed in 1924 by Carleton Winslow who was a key proponent of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in Southern California. A tympanum is a semi-circular decorative feature placed above a door or window that is commonly seen in classical Christian buildings like churches. Executed by Marshall Laird in 1924, the tympanum was placed over the historic main entrance of the library and was completed seven years after SBPL opened in 1917. In the center is featured the Coat of Arms for the City of Santa Barbara which depicts two Spanish ships sailing the ocean. The rolling green hills represent the Santa Ynez mountain range. On either side of the coat of arms are the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. The shields above represent four major European libraries founded from the 11th to the 17th centuries–the University of Bologna, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the University of Salamanca, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The depiction of the philosophers and the coffered ceiling are tributes to Italian Renaissance artist Raphael’s The School of Athens from 1510 located in the pope’s library in the Vatican.

The tympanum was restored by Joseph Knowles in 1962; the sculptures of Plato and Aristotle were restored by Nathan Zakheim in 1979.

Learn more about the tympanum
 

John Gamble 

Sunburst Over California Poppies (1930)

sunburst and poppy artwork outside the library

John Gamble was known for his paintings of poppies, the state flower of California. On a bicycle trip along Sloat Boulevard in San Francisco in the 1890s, he discovered a field of poppies and lupines and started to paint them ever since. The poppies over the Faulkner Gallery entrance was created during the revival of Egyptian architecture (part of the Art Deco style) in America in the 1920s and 30s. This renewed interest in Egyptian art and culture was called Egyptomania. Gamble had traveled to Egypt in 1910.