ART

A massive Henry Moore sculpture is a suitable altar for Christopher Wren’s 1677 church of St. Stephen Walbrook in London, a British court ruled Tuesday. In one of Britain’s more unusual court cases, the Church of England’s Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved spent two months pondering whether the 8 1/2-ton piece of travertine marble fitted the canon-law definition of an altar table. “There is no objection to the altar on theological grounds,” Lord Justice Lloyd said in issuing a unanimous 70-page ruling. “Though it is an artifact of great weight it is nevertheless capable of being the holy table.” The Georgian Group, an influential conservationist lobby, argued that the sculpture’s bulk conflicted with the spatial complexity of the church in London’s financial district.