Pillar (architecture)

“ The pillar architecture of some of the borders, with pendant festoons of flowers, is also very handsome.
18855, folio, is a Book of Offices written in a Gothic text. The miniatures are large full-page paintings within architectural frames or porches, with coloured pillars or pilasters with panels of rich blue, covered with golden traceries, bronze gold pendants at side,—occasional borders as in the “Hours of Anne of Brittany.” The work is of the older school of Tours, but loaded with ornamental details from North Italian pilaster-work. Among the best miniatures are the Nativity (34 v.) ”

“ What forms are made use of for pillars we are but imperfectly aware. One of the notices I have quoted speaks of their being square and of other forms. The few which remain in situ are of the former kind, mere fragments of wall: but at Worth Church there are, in the jambs of the chancel arch, half pillars, 21⁄2 ft. in diameter, with very perfect capitals; and certainly an entire pillar of this form must have suggested the demi-column. At Canterbury there are two round{39} columns brought from Reculver, which are probably of Anglo-Saxon date. Their capitals are of the most remarkable form. ”

“ The glory, however, of this temple resides in its corridors. These, as will be seen by the plan, extend to nearly 4000 feet in length. The breadth varies from 20 ft. to 30 ft. of free floor space, and their height is apparently about 30 ft. from the floor to the centre of the roof. Each pillar or pier is compound, and richer and more elaborate in design than those of the Parvati porch at Chillambaram (Woodcut No. 197) , and are certainly more modern in date. ”

“ Without speculating as to the origin of pillar and architrave, with their subsidiary elements of plinth, capital, cornice, etc., it is clear that the last two—the pediment and the arch—resulted from the pressure of new and external circumstances. Into the history of the orders we need not enter. Their function is that of ornament, and the choice of their forms was probably governed by considerations of taste rather than the requirements of situation. The classic architecture in the best examples presents all the characteristics of a finished and matured art ”

“ Thus it attains a certain grace, analogous to that which in living creatures consists in the ease and suitableness of every movement and position to its end. Accordingly we see in the good antique style of architecture every part, whether pillar, column, arch, entablature, or door, window, stair, or balcony, attain its end in the directest and simplest manner, at the same time displaying it openly and naively; just as organised nature also does in its works. ”

“ But if there is not room enough for the construction of a wall, make channels with their vents extending to the open air. Then lay two-foot tiles resting on the margin of the channel on one side, and on the other side construct a foundation of pillars for them, made of eight-inch bricks, on top of each of which the edges of two tiles may be supported, each pillar being not more than a hand's breadth distant from the wall. Then, above, set hooked tiles fastened to the wall from bottom to top, carefully covering the inner sides of them with pitch so that they will reject moisture. ”

“ They only differ in that one has a central pillar and the other has none. The one is simply divided into four groined vaults on the most customary principle (Fig. 371) . The other is similarly vaulted up to the line of the square, the angles of which would be represented by the four bosses of the first-named vaults; but from thence the diagonal ribs, instead of returning downwards on to a central pillar, continue to rise till they meet in the middle point of the chapel (Fig. 372) . This upper portion, therefore, is the top of a square dome ”

“ Putting whole quarries into a single girder, it makes room for crowds; and what is more significant than this, inasmuch as the steel pillar is an invention that makes it possible to put floors up first, and build the walls around the floors, instead of putting the walls up first and supporting the floors upon the walls, as in the ancient world, it has come to pass that the modern world being the ancient world turned upside down, modern architecture is ancient architecture turned inside out, a symbol of many things. ”

“ Thus the simplest provision is a mere projecting pilaster, carrying the cross ribs, the wall itself taking the place of the lateral ones. This pilaster may be converted into a shaft or a double shaft, or the rib may be amplified by a central semi-roll moulding, and the whole carried by a triple shaft or other combinations, or a corbel substituted for the pilaster or group of shafts. Thus we have vaulting reduced to a principle which, however plain, is at once artistic and constructionally good, and is susceptible of all degrees of ornamentation. ”

“ The pilasters of this order are again four in number, and are set in pairs on either side of the circular opening, the width of this opening making it impossible to space them otherwise. We thus have in the clerestory compartment of this façade a forced arrangement of pilasters, which may have led to that alternation of wide and narrow intervals that became very common in the subsequent architecture of the Renaissance. The attic over the ground story, which extends across the entire front and answers to nothing in the interior of the building, is presumably also by Alberti. ”

“ Byzantine structural scheme. The entablature which is carried around the whole interior at the springing of the vaults, has to do duty at once for the small order of the upper stage and for the great angle pilasters, and thus in so far as it is in good proportion for the one it cannot be so for the other. Then the true magnitudes of the piers and the pendentive arches are falsified by the pilasters and simulated archivolts which spring from them. ”

“ Here an order of rusticated Doric pilasters, supporting an entablature with channelled consoles in the place of triglyphs, and a cornice surmounted with a balustrade forming a balcony to the story above, divides the basement wall into alternately wide and narrow bays. A round-arched window in each bay has a heavy keystone in the form of a sculptured bust, which forms at the same time a corbel to the entablature. The unequal spacing of the pilasters leads to an awkward irregularity in the spacing of the channelled consoles which do duty as triglyphs in the frieze. ”

“ It will generally be admitted that the church as seen in the Frontispiece is far more attractive than it is when seen from the East; also that the great Order of pilasters, 112 feet high, resting upon a basement of eighteen feet, is too colossal even for the “colossal Order”—the separate pilasters showing too much like towers of masonry and requiring a different architectural treatment from that which they received as mere subordinate details; that the design suffers from the absence of the complete group of minor cupolas, of which only two out of the four have been erected ”

“ The surface of a pier or pilaster may be enriched by any kind of fluting or chasing that does not materially diminish its substance, but to sink panels in such supporting members is to destroy in a measure the expression of homogeneous compactness. The classic details in this building show the same disregard for correct classic forms and proportions that we find in the art of the Renaissance generally. The superimposed pilasters on the angles are of uniform width, though they differ greatly in height, and those of the various openings are of still different proportions and sizes. ”

“ After the first feeling of surprise and delight, I began to wish that a massier style of architecture had been adopted. The pillars, which are iron, are so slender as to give an idea of insecurity; their lightness is much admired, but it is disproportioned and out of place. ”

“ For the interior the architect has employed a great order of Doric pilasters, a single pilaster on the face of each pier, and on the sides of the piers, under the aisle archivolts, he has placed pairs of smaller pilasters. The soffits of the archivolts are very wide, and have each a pair of salient sub-archivolts corresponding with the pilasters. It had been common for the architects of the Roman Renaissance to break the entablature into ressauts over the columns or pilasters of the orders when used in this way, as San Gallo had done in Montepulciano and Michael Angelo in St. ”

“ Between these Renaissance pilasters are Romanesque entrance arches, in which there is a return to truculence of demeanor; but these are seen to be not entrances at all, but only innocent windows of bank parlors, and the real entrances under them, covered with trefoiled gablets in cast iron, are obviously harmless. It is quite fair to say that up to the top of the first story there is no design in the building, nothing that betrays any evidence of a general intention. ”

“ The building owes its picturesque effect more to its irregular plan (as portions of an earlier structure were enclosed in it) than to any brilliant conceptions on the part of its architect. There is an endless variety of charming detail in the capitals, corbels and other decorative features, but the employment of pilaster strips purely as decorative features (without any such structural property as that in the Porte Dorée at the Cour Ovale) suggests that the Italian architect Serlio, to whom sometimes the work is ascribed, certainly had nothing to do with it. ”

“ The façade of the north side of the court of Kirby Hall, for instance, is divided into bays by colossal pilasters of hybrid style, which have not even a semblance of structural meaning, since they carry only ressauts of an entablature, the total height of which is less than the diameters of the pilasters. ”

“ In artistic quality the features are very various, and the one trait they seem to have in common is a disregard for academic correctness or for purity of style. This is conspicuous in the main entrance, which is perhaps the most effective and successful of them, being a massive and powerful porte-cochère, in which, however, an unmistakably Gothic dwarf column adjoins a panelled pilaster, which as unmistakably owes its origin to the Renaissance, and a like freedom of eclecticism may be observed throughout the building. ”

“ The chief innovation in the design was the wide separation of the interior stone dome from the lofty exterior decorative cupola and lantern of wood, this separation being designed to meet the conflicting demands of internal and external effect. To the same architect is due the formal monotony of the Place Vendôme, all the houses surrounding it being treated with a uniform architecture of colossal pilasters, at once monumental and inappropriate. ”

“ The effect of the scheme, [219] as a whole, from the point of view of structure, is curious with its great pilasters of unusual projection, which have the function of supporting nothing but miniature pedestals and finials. In a general view the low attic wall has somewhat the effect of an entablature, though it is behind, and not over, the pilasters; but considered as an entablature its frieze is encumbered with the pediments of the windows which rise against it. ”

“ In some phases of traditional decoration much use has been made of pilasters—the spacing and distribution of which, while conforming to the conditions of the interior, are similar to the usual employment of pilasters in exterior architecture, with the difference that the spaces between them are occupied by panels or other features. ”

“ The designer appears to have had not the slightest idea that arches and columns, pilasters and entablatures, have any meaning save as elements of abstract ornamental composition to be played about according to his fancy. The front (Plate V) is an upright rectangle, crowned with an entablature and a low pediment. A broad pilaster is set on each angle, and the space between is filled with a wide and deep recess having a splayed arch reaching to the entablature on splayed jambs. ”

“ These pilasters are raised on pedestals forming ressauts to a podium, and some of the windows are grouped in pairs, some in double pairs, and some are single. In the taller part the windows are taller, and show considerable differences of design. One group, consisting of a double pair, has flanking pilasters reaching only to the impost, with a stilt-block rising from the capital of each to the crowning entablature, while Corinthian colonnettes, with strongly marked entasis, support the archivolts—both pilasters and shafts being raised on low pedestals. ”

“ A complete construction of post and lintel, of pilaster and entablature, is supplemented by another construction of flying buttresses which are clearly superfluous and irrelevant, and which, instead of resisting the thrust of an arch, have the appearance of ineffectually “shoring up” a structure which, though complete, is unstable. ”

“ The arch and jambs are splayed, but there are no capitals; heads look out of circles in the spandrils; and the splay as well as the panels of the side pilasters are enriched with carvings which, partly perhaps owing to the granite in which they are cut, are much less delicate than elsewhere. The Corinthian capitals of the pilasters are distinctly clumsy, as are the mouldings, but the most interesting part of the whole design is the frieze, which is so immensely extended as to leave room for four large niches separated by rather clumsy shafts and containing figures of St. ”

“ The outside is plain, except for the west front, which stands at the top of a great flight of steps. On the west front two orders of pilasters are placed one above the other. Of these the lower is Doric, of more slender proportions than usual, while the upper has no true capitals beyond the projecting entablature and corbels on the frieze. Single pilasters divide the centre of the front into three equal parts and coupled pilasters stand at the corners of the towers. In the central part three plain arches open on to the porch, with a pedimented niche above each. ”