[1] Decorative Art: Fine art which is applied to the beautifying of that which has primarily a useful purpose. Architecture is the most complex of the decorative arts, and for this reason, and because it is also carried out on a large scale with great possibilities of noble effects, the most important of the decorative arts.

[2] Doric: Belonging to the Dorians, a Greek people. The term, Doric style, was first applied to the very few Roman buildings and parts of buildings of which the basement story of the Theatre of Marcellus and that of the Colosseum at Rome, are good instances. When the Grecian buildings of Athens, Girgenti and PÆstum were studied, the term was extended to them; and these give us what we call Grecian-Doric.

[3] Metope: The word means originally the space between two triglyphs (see definition of entablature); but is generally applied in English writing to the slab or block of stone which fills this space in the Doric temples known to us. It is evident that the outer surface of this block was sometimes painted, and it is known that it was sometimes carved in low relief, as at Selinuntum, of which temple sculptured slabs are preserved in the museum at Palermo; while those of the Theseion and the Parthenon were in very high relief.

[4] Pteroma: The side or flank, hence, in modern usage, the space covered by the roof of a portico, and therefore including the columns and intercolumniations, although in general usage it applies only to the passage between the columns and the wall behind.

[5] Naos: Called also cella: the enclosed part of a Greek temple, that which has solid walls and may be divided into two or three rooms: also sometimes the larger of these subdivisions as distinguished from the Opisthodomos, or Treasury.

[6] Octastyle: Having eight columns, when said of a portico; having eight columns in front, when said of a temple or similar building.

[7] Hexastyle: Having six columns; as in the case of octastyle for eight.

[8] Entablature: In a piece of classic architecture, the three horizontal members above the columns when these three are taken together as forming one part of the order. The entablature consists of architrave or epistyle, immediately above the columns, the frieze, and the cornice, each of which may have several decorative subdivisions. Thus in the Ionic Order the epistyle may be divided horizontally into three surfaces projecting slightly more and more from the bottom upward. The frieze in the Doric style (Roman or Greek) is divided by triglyphs into metopes; and in the other orders has often sculptured ornament. The varieties of form in the cornice are very considerable. A triglyph is one of those blocks cut with vertical channels, which seem to rest upon the epistyle and to support the cornice. The metopes are the spaces between; and also the non-structural slabs or blocks which fill those spaces. In a very few instances the entablature is irregular in some respect; thus the portico of Caryatides, Pl. VI, may be said to have no frieze, but epistyle and cornice only. In Roman work the whole entablature is occasionally arched up, bent to a curve, as in a temple at Baalbec, and as in a palace at Spalato.

[9] Doric Order: In Greek and Roman architecture, and in those neo-classic styles founded upon antiquity, the Order is the unit of design and consists of one complete column (shaft and capital, with base, if any, and pedestal, if any) and so much of the entablature as may be sufficient to show its whole character. The Grecian Doric Order alluded to in the text, is peculiar in the shape and number of the channels of the shaft, in the echinos-shaped bell of the capital, in the square and unadorned abacus, in having no base, in having the frieze broken up into short lengths by the triglyphs, and in the minor details depending upon the above.

[10] Architrave:

[11] Frieze: for these terms see footnote Entablature above.

[12] Stylobate: The flat, continuous surface upon which the columns stand, as in a colonnade. When the whole flat surface forming the floor of the passageway (see Pteroma) is considered, the word stereobate is employed.

[13] Bell: That part of the capital of a column which is between the necking below and the abacus above. The term is applied also to the imagined general form of the same member apart from the ornamentation; thus the bell of a Corinthian capital is to be traced beneath the acanthus leaves.

[14] Pediment: The triangular wall at the end of the low pitched roof, in a Greek or Roman building. The sunken panel alone, above the horizontal cornice and beneath the raking cornice, is called the Tympanum, or, in Greek temples, often the Aetos (?et??) or Eagle.

[15] Neo-classic: Studied from Greco-Roman monuments; said of a work of art or of a style. The neo-classic architecture of Europe begins about 1420 in Italy. (See Risorgimento and Renaissance.)

[16] Choir: Properly, the space in a church reserved for the clergy and their assistants, especially the singers: hence, by extension I—The enclosure itself which is sometimes very massive and elaborate, a high stone wall sculptured or otherwise richly adorned, and

II—That part of a cruciform church which contains this enclosure, namely, the fourth arm of the cross, that one which extends generally towards the east from the meeting of the nave and transept.

[17] Ionic: Belonging to the Ionian Greeks; Ionic style, that characterized by capitals adorned with volutes, shafts much more slender than in the Doric style and decorated by flutes instead of channels; these flutes having a nearly semicircular section and being separated by narrow fillets or flat bands instead of meeting at the sharp arris.

[18] Anthemion: Any floral ornament arranged like a bouquet; an abstract decoration of sprigs or branches rising from a common point and separating into a broader head. The Greek anthemion, often called palmette, or honeysuckle ornament, seems to be composed of slender leaves; whereas the anthemion in Persian and other Asiatic art is often a group of flowers, perhaps alternating with leaves.

[19] Egg-and-Dart: An ornament consisting of an alternation of flattened balls or bosses with sharp pointed members like arrow heads. The minor details vary much; but it is usual for the flattened eggs to be surrounded by a deep cutting or a raised rim, and for the arrow points to be alternated with these.

[20] Pandrosion: The shrine temple or enclosure of the nymph Pandrosos, a daughter of Cecrops. It is known that this was situated close to the temple of Erectheus, and therefore the portico of Caryatides on the south flank of the Erectheion has been called by that name.

[21] Corinthian: Derived from Corinth; Corinthian Order, the latest to be introduced of the three Grecian Orders and the one taken over most readily by the Romans. The details are very like those of the Ionic Order except the capital which is the first instance in antiquity of a generally concave bell invested thickly with leafage.

[22] Tholos: A circular building; used in archÆological writing to describe one whose purpose is not certainly known, as the Tholos of Atreus at Mykenai, generally thought to be a tomb; that near Epidauros thought by some to be the spring-house, or the sacred well of Asklepios.

[23] Choragic: Having to do with the Choragos, the manager of the sacred chorus in Athens. This was an honorary post involving much expense and labor to the occupant.

[24] HypÆthral: Open to the sky; HypÆthral opening, a space uncovered, part of a Greek temple, perhaps entirely unroofed, perhaps only having a roof partly opened in sky-lights. HypÆthral Theory: any one of several opinions as to the possible lighting of the interior of a temple from above, either through the roof, or by the partial omission of a roof so as to form a central open court.

[25] Risorgimento: In Italian, a new arising; this is the common term for the revival of classical learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, coupled with the advance in expressional painting and sculpture of the same epoch, and developing later in the revival of classical design in architecture. The term Rinascimento (rebirth) is used in the same sense, but is apparently rather a reflection of the prevailing French word Renaissance. It would be well if English writers would employ the term Risorgimento for the Italian movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and Renaissance for the French movement of the sixteenth century with its equivalents in northern Europe. As for Spain, in which the classical revival followed very closely upon that of Italy, the term Renacimiento seems to correspond very closely to the Italian Risorgimento and the French Renaissance.

[26] Cupola: A cup-shaped roof, either built of solid masonry and so really a vault, or a mere decorative shell.

[27] Groin-vaulting: Vaulting in which one barrel vault meets and intersects another, so that the projecting solid angles, called groins, are formed by the meeting of the hollow rounded surfaces.

[28] Nave: In a building with three or more parallel subdivisions, forming together one great hall, like a large Gothic church, that part which rises highest, and has generally windows above the roofs of the lower aisles.

[29] Aisle: See the definition of nave.

[30] Barrel-vault: A vault whose cross-section is everywhere the same as if part of a tube.

[31] In antis: Latin, between the antÆ. The anta is the end of a wall treated so as to be an almost independent member, like a square pillar in which the wall ends. The portico made by two of these set opposite one another and with columns between, is said to have two columns or four columns in antis.

[32] Trabeated: Built with beams or lintels (said of a building, or part of a building) or characterized by the use of beams and lintels to the exclusion of arches (said of a building or a style). Thus the Pantheon at Rome though entirely vaulted in its main structure has a trabeated portico, and the screens in front of the great niches within (see Pl. IX) are of trabeated construction as far as they go—that is they consist of an entablature supported on columns. The term “arcuated” is used in direct contradistinction from trabeated and denotes that which is constructed on the principle of the arch or that which is characterized by the use.

[33] Romanesque: Literally, semi-Roman, or would-be Roman; applied to any or all styles of art, especially architecture, which were developed directly from the Roman imperial art of the years before 450. In ordinary usage, the basilica style of Italy and even the similar art in the northwest of Europe are called Latin, and the style built up in eastern Europe with Constantinople for its centre, is called Byzantine; but Romanesque may be considered a term covering all these, and as including, too, all European art until the complete establishment of the Gothic art in the northwest, and in the East until the establishment of Saracenic or Mohammedan art about the ninth century, A. D.

[34] Byzantine: The art of the Eastern Empire centred in Byzantium or Constantinople. Modern developments of this art, without radical changes, exist in Moldavia and the Caucasian regions, and its influence is seen in the native architecture of Russia.

[35] Basilica: Originally, under the Roman imperial system, a building for varied business, public and private, having often a courtroom connected with the open hall: hence, under the earlier Christian control, a church built like most of the earlier basilicas, that is to say, with a nave and two or more aisles. A special feature of the Christian basilicas was the transept, a high and open hall built across the upper end of the nave and aisles: and beyond this (that is, farther from the entrance doorways) was often the apse, a generally semicircular projection.

[36] Clearstory: That part of the nave which rises above the aisle roofs, and has windows to light the interior.

[37] Respond: The pilaster, or engaged column, or pier of any shape, which forms the end of an arcade or colonnade marking the place of meeting with the enclosing wall.

[38] Apse: A projecting member of a building, usually forming an enlargement or addition to a large hall, as a Roman basilica, or especially, a Church. The plan is usually a semicircle, or a semicircle with an added parallelogram to lengthen it, or a polygon approaching a half circle.

[39] Bay: One division of a long building whose successive parts are alike, or very similar.

[40] Buttress: A mass of material, usually masonry, intended to resist, by its dead weight, the thrust of an arch, or vault, or, more rarely, the spread of a framed roof or the like.

Flying buttress: A sloping bar of stone, supported on an arched structure which serves to carry the thrust of an arch or vault across a space to the buttress beyond.

[41] Triforium: Properly, a gallery more or less open, built in the wall opposite the aisle roof, and therefore above the great arches of the nave and choir and below the clearstory windows. Often, a gallery in the wall below the clearstory but less accurately placed.

[42] Chevet: In mediÆval and especially Gothic architecture the rounded end of the choir including the aisles which pass around the sanctuary and the chapels outside of the aisles. The shape may be curvilinear or polygonal. The original term in French is applied to square east ends also; but this is hardly accepted in the English usage.

[43] ThermÆ: In Latin an establishment for warm baths: a plural noun used for a single building or group of buildings. The ThermÆ of Caracalla mentioned in this chapter, occupied all the space within a bounding wall which formed a square of 1,100 feet (about twenty-eight acres) and within this were gardens, running grounds and the like, and among these the massive central building itself, 400 × 750 feet, twice the space occupied by the capitol at Washington, which is also immeasurably less massive and permanent in structure.

[44] Risorgimento: See note, p. 46.

[45] Archivolt: the outer vertical face of an arch; and, where there are several concentric arches, the general outer face of the whole group; that face which seems to form part of the wall in which the arch is built.

[46] Intrados: The under or concave face of the solid structure of an arch.

[47] Classicismo: The epoch of close study of antiquity, 1520 to 1570.

[48] ChaÎne: In French, a system usually vertical of larger and more perfectly dressed stones in a wall of lighter or rougher material. Thus the quoins at the corner of a building and the alternately long and short stones at a window opening or door opening are chaÎnes, but the same device may be used to stiffen a long and unbroken wall.

[49] Rocaille Decoration: That which had originally a rough imitation of natural rock forms mingled with shells; a fashion passing rapidly into scroll-work in relief, giving very peculiar shapes to panels, doors, window-casements and even to details of masonry. The rococo style is partly based upon rocaille decoration.