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Palace of Fine Arts
The Rotunda and Laguna |
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| The Palace of Fine Arts has the finest natural setting on the Exposition grounds. Consummate skill in planning the entire architectural ensemble gave it a commanding position, at the extreme west of the group of exhibit palaces. The architect, Bernard. R. Maybeck of San Francisco, found as an asset on beginning his work, a small natural lake and a fine group of Monterey cypress. With this foundation he has created a temple of supreme loveliness, thoroughly original in conception, yet classic in its elemental simplicity and in its appeal to the highest and noblest traditions of beauty and art, revealing the imagination of a poet, the fine sense of color and harmony of an artist, and the sure hand of a master-architect in his confident control of architectural forms, of decorative detail and of the contributing landscape elements. The conception of the rotunda is said to have been suggested to the architect by Böcklin's painting "The Island of the Dead" and that of the peristyle by Gerome's "Chariot Race." Across the Laguna from the Palace of Fine Arts runs Administration Avenue and the magnificent Roman wall which forms the western facade of the main group of palaces. |
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