United States or Russia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The vaulting has wall-ribs, cross-springers, and groin-ribs, and is rather high-pitched. Upon the cross-springers the mouldings are a large keeled round having on either side a hollow between fillets, while the groin-ribs are moulded as in the Markenfield Chapel.
At the top of the latter ran two parallel black picture mouldings between which we could easily insert cabinet photographs of the actors and actresses which for the moment we thought most worthy of a place in our collection. As the room was fairly large and as the mouldings ran entirely around it, we had plenty of space for even our very elastic love for the heroes and heroines of the footlights.
But it must not be supposed that this nave is altogether to be condemned, as some critics have condemned it. Each bay, looked at by itself, is not only perfectly logical and coherent in design, but is filled with delicate and appropriate detail. The capitals, if small, are finely carved; the mouldings well contrasted and subordinated; and the window tracery is the finest possible.
All the piers and jambs as well as the windows are built of Arrabida marble, a red breccia found in the mountains to the west of Setubal; the rest is all whitewashed except the arches and vaulting ribs which are painted in imitation of the marble piers. Outside, the main door, also of Arrabida marble, is large and pointed, with many mouldings and two empty niches on each side.
Over the windows and door-ways and chimney-pieces, are sculptures and mouldings of exquisite workmanship; and the eyeis bewildered by the profusion of caryatides, and arabesques, and rosettes, and fan-like flutings, and garlands of fruits and flowers and acorns, and bullocks'-heads with draperies of foliage, and muzzles of lions, holding rings in their teeth.
The panels formed by the pilaster were enriched with elegant mouldings of scroll-work and painted in creamy white picked out with gold. Two of the panels were occupied by massive, handsomely mounted doors of frosted aethereum, the panels of which were decorated with fanciful scroll-work of the polished metal, imparting a very rich and handsome effect.
I have no terms to describe the variety of pillars, of pediments, of mouldings, and cornices, some Grecian, others Saracenical, that adorn these edifices, of which the pencil of Canaletti conveys so perfect an idea as to render all verbal description superfluous. At one end of this grand perspective appears the Rialto; the sweep of the canal conceals the other.
As they stood looking over the railing, 'twas like looking down upon an immense concave opal, peopled by the gorgeously apparelled. Myriad tints seeming to assimulate and focus wherever the eyes rested. Gilt bewreathed pillars, mouldings, shimmering satin, lights, jewels, flowers, ceiling, gallery and parquetry appeared like a homogeneous mass of opal.
The single story built above the ground-floor did not rise as high as the mouldings which bordered the terraced roof, and thus left an empty space between the ceiling and the flat roof of the villa. Short, small pillars, with flowery capitals, divided into groups of four by the tall columns, formed an open gallery around this aerial apartment open to every wind.
Let us take for example that school of art over which many of you would perhaps think this law had but little power the school of Gothic architecture. Many of us may have been in the habit of thinking of that school rather as of one of forms than of facts a school of pinnacles, and buttresses, and conventional mouldings, and disguise of nature by monstrous imaginings not a school of truth at all.
Word Of The Day