Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
It is framed as are the windows, and has shafts, capitals, abaci, and bases just like those already described; but the arch is different. It is beautifully moulded, but is if one may so speak made up of nine reversed cusps, whose convex sides form the arch: the inner square moulding too is enriched with ball ornament.
In the richer Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the capitals of the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with small nominal abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry the serviceable abacus of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rouen.
The large round arches have chamfered edges; the columns are monoliths of granite about eighteen inches thick; the bases and the abaci all romanesque in form, though many of the capitals, as can be seen from their shape and carving, are of the fourteenth or even fifteenth century, showing how Juan Garcia de Toledo, who rebuilt the church for Dom João I., tried, in restoring the cloister, to copy the already existing features and as usual betrayed the real date by his later details.
There is absolutely no decorative element except four shallow masks beneath the abaci of the pilasters. All is cold and broad and dry, contrasting strangely with the accumulated details of the lower portion. In the central niche, immediately above the Moses, stands a Madonna of fine sculptural quality, beneath a shallow arch, which repeats the shell-pattern.
The two forces come to rest in the abaci, which, as the crowning members of the columns, directly carry the weight of the entire entablature. The equilibrium between the horizontal and the vertical tendencies is, however, not a static but a moving one; for the two opposing forces are present in every part of the building from the stylobate to the ridge of the triangular pediment.
Inside, the capitals of the chapel arches as well as their rich cuspings are very like those of the founder's chapel; the capitals having octagonal abaci and stiff vine-leaves, and the trefoiled cusps ending in square vine-leaves, while the arch mouldings are, as in King João's chapel, more English than French in section.
The next is a continuation of the abaci of the capitals. The other passes under the sills of the windows. A comparison of this wall with that corresponding to it in the south of the transept shows that for some reason the windows here were totally changed and the others only partially. This may suggest that at the time of the fire this part was more damaged than the other.
The large triforium, the untraceried windows, the squareness of everything except a few English round abaci in some bays of the triforium, the external heaviness and simplicity, all make the early Gothic of Fécamp little more than pointed Romanesque. We do not say this in disparagement.
The downward force is already manifest in the widened base of the column, where it works in conjunction with the inward tendency, and shows its effect at the critical points at the top of the supporting column in the spreading echinus with its horizontal bands beneath and in the horizontal lines of the abaci.
It therefore forms their abaci only; and in order to mark the diminished importance of its function, it ceases to receive, as the abacus of the capital, the decoration which it received as the string course of the wall. This last arrangement is of great frequency in Venice, occurring most characteristically in St. Mark's: and in the Gothic of St.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking