Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
This explains the reason why true Gothic buildings have always been said to be built mainly on the basis of the Equilateral Triangle; this naturally follows, because the use of the Vesica creates, and therefore necessitates, the appearance of the Equilateral Triangle in every conceivable situation.
I will, however, give one more example of its creative power. The problem of describing a Pentagon must have puzzled architects considerably in those early times, but this was again easily accomplished by means of the Vesica. This is also the method used in that old manuscript of the fifteenth century named "Geometria deutsch."
There are two openings of this cave; the one, the larger, is like a cage of railings, with the gleam of an altar in the gloom beyond, a hundred burning candles, and sheaves and stacks of crutches clinging to the broken roofs of rock; the other, and smaller, and that farther from us, is an opening in the cliff, shaped somewhat like a vesica.
A beautiful example of decoration, on the basis of the Vesica, is seen in the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. I will conclude this subject by quoting from the summing up by Prof. From the first dawn of civilisation the "Great One" always had an enemy with whom he had to fight; having conquered, he married that enemy, and their offspring was Life or Duration.
It is in rather a bad state, painted in tempera on panel. In the sky is a pretty Madonna and Child in a vesica surrounded by angels. The rest of the sky has rows of angels in it, and below, on the earth, kneeling bishops, potentates, and others, with some nice little children in front.
Above these, on either side of a great vesica enclosing a representation of our Lord, are two shrines, one marked "Relics," the other, which stands on the side of greater honour, is marked Scs. Thus the Canterbury monks at St. Augustine's, the great treasure-house of early Canterbury saints, put in the places of highest honour the relics of Bertha's husband and of Bertha's Gallican bishop.
It may be that it originated from the quadripartite vaulting of the Normans, the segmental groins of which, crossing diagonally, produced to appearance the pointed arch. It may be that it was derived from that mystical figure of a pointed oval form, the vesica piscis.
And just as we see so many Cathedrals of the Middle Ages are stated by antiquarians to have been planned on the Equilateral Triangle, so do we find the Pentagon appearing as the basis of Architectural designs of buildings of a later date, such as Liverpool Castle, Chester Castle, and other similar structures; but the true means by which each were laid down, as in the case of the Equilateral Triangle, was again the Vesica Piscis.
A careful examination of the proportions of the structures themselves, and the character of the decorations found in the finest examples of buildings representing that style, at once shows us that the incentive was the symbolism attached to the mysterious figure called the Vesica Piscis, which appears to be not only the principal feature upon which the whole style rests, but is also employed, as a symbol of the Divine, wherever we have Gothic Architecture, either in painted windows or mural decorations.
All these unique properties place the figure far above that of a square for practical work, because even when the diagonal of a square is given, it is impossible to find the exact length of any of its sides or vice versa; whereas in the Vesica rectangle the diagonal is exactly double its shorter side, and upon any length of line which may be taken on the tracing-board as a base for elevation, an Equilateral Triangle will be found whose sides are of course all equal and therefore known, as they are equal to the base, and whose line joining apex to centre of base is a true Plumb line, forming at its foot the perfect right angle, so important in the laying of every stone of a building.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking