Zygomatic arch

“ In its deep, dark arch, as in a black frame, is set a vista of dazzling whiteness, plastered tombstones, pillars, and obelisks huddled into irregular groups, with here and there a [108] figure hewn in fair white marble soaring on outstretched wings, and everywhere a scintillation as of molten metal—the colourless, intolerable glare, to which the fierce sunlight fires the corrugated zinc of the roofs protecting the monuments. ”

“ And if to disengage the charm of space, Raphael and Perugino and Francia and even Mariotto Albertinelli make such noble use of the arch, was it not that its lovely limitation and definition of the landscape had from early Roman antiquity been revealed by Architecture? Arches and perspectives of arches, cloisters and colonnades, were weaving a rhythm of space round the artists in their daily walks. Where Nature was beautiful and Art was second Nature, the poets in paint were made as well as born. ”

“ Below, the ceilings of the arch and corridors are brilliant from concealed lights placed within them.
Court of the Universe
Triumphal Arch, The Rising Sun
The triumphal arches which by night gain in majesty and mysterious power, by day have the added beauty of the color manipulation and decorative treatment, which is exceedingly rich and varied.
The twisted columns of Sienna marble which flank the arch, two on either side, are composite, mingling Corinthian and Ionic elements. Each column is crowned with a sculptured figure, representing the "Angel of Peace" by Leo Lentelli. ”

“ Norman architecture is in the use of the pointed form of arch, yet in the study of the early buildings of this date it is curious to notice how evenly the balance is held between the pointed and the round arch, and how at one time it was quite an open question whether the Gothic style would be distinguished by a round or a pointed arch. ”

“ A pointed Gothic arch may be, often is, very beautiful; but, applying our test of utility, it is most obviously out of place, and therefore inartistic, where close economy, convenience, and abundance of light are required. For the sake of strength, if for no other reason, let the top of the openings be arched, but a low arch of one arc or two is often preferable to a high one. If, for economy's sake, you wish to make the top of the sash square, do so, curving the upper portion of the frame as a sort of centre on which the masonry may rest ”

“ If there be any one feature which the flamboyant architect loved to decorate richly, it was the niche—it was what the capital is to the Corinthian order; yet in the case before us there is an ugly beehive put in the place of the principal niche of the arch. I am not sure if I am right in my interpretation of its meaning, but I have little doubt that two figures below, now broken away, once represented an Annunciation; and on another part of the same cathedral, I find the descent of the Spirit, encompassed by rays of light, represented very nearly in the form of the niche in question ”

“ The constructive value of Gothic architecture is, however, far greater than that of Romanesque, as the pointed arch is not only susceptible of an infinite variety of forms and applications to the weight to be sustained, but it possesses, in the outline given to its masonry at its perfect periods, the means of self-sustainment to a far greater degree than the round arch. ”

“ The columns that form each angle of the arch are little more than fragments, but the engaged columns on the inside have suffered less. This arch was supposed by some archæologists to have some connection with the great arch at Orange, but nothing can be proved with any certainty. It remains one of those puzzling relics of the past that will continue to provoke differences of opinion until the fabric crumbles out of human sight and mingles with the dust of ages. ”

“ Though the majority are not free from Hellenic influences, they yet generally maintain the peculiar national characteristics, being imitations of wooden constructions somewhat similar to the rock-cut tombs. The lid in some instances appears to be of slat-work, and, instead of the semicircular gable common in Phœnicia, presents a pointed arch. The cornice dentils distinctly betray their derivation from the projecting ceiling beams, which, upon the block-house tombs, had still preserved the round form of unhewn timbers. ”

“ The edges of the two great blank archivolts are felt to be painfully conspicuous; all the four are at once beaded or chamfered, as at b, Fig. LXX.; a rich group of deep lines, running concentrically with the arch, is the result on the instant, and the fate of the voussoirs is sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle, and unconditionally; the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from grouped shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable richness of the fully developed Gothic jamb and arch ”

“ Q. What difference is there between the arches of this style, which support the clerestory, and those of an earlier period?
A. The lancet arch is seldom seen; the equilateral arch is generally, though not always, used. Both this and the obtuse-angled arch are, taken exclusively, difficult to be distinguished from those of an earlier period. In small buildings the edges of the pier arches are plain and chamfered. In large churches a series of quarter-round or roll-mouldings, which have often a square-edged fillet attached, are applied to the sub-arch, edges, and facing. ”

“ Through the arch, which was used by the Etruskans, but which under the Romans became a most important part of architecture, the art of constructing was suddenly freed of all hindrances. Courts could be formed with more ease, and the ground-plan drawn with greater variety. ”

“ Similarly the towers of churches and cathedrals, which are built on arches, will give away quite suddenly after standing to all appearance quite firm for hundreds of years. There is an architect's maxim which runs, "The arch never sleeps." That means that the arches on which the great weight of a church or cathedral tower rests are always in a state of strain; they are always, as it were, imperceptibly quivering; and they are always liable, if the strain on them should be increased in the slightest degree, to give way, or to resettle the weight on their shoulders in some way. ”

“ For nature to repeat the strange impression of the real Gothic arch, it were necessary that the branches of the touching crests should vastly exceed, both in length of curve and strength of spring, anything of their kind existing in the vegetable world. The effect of the Gothic arch depends altogether upon the intimation of energy. ”

“ These still are left, exhibiting external and internal ranges of arches, springing directly from the capitals of the columns, without any intervening entablature. What more, we ask, is wanting here, to one of the most decided characteristics of one species, at least, of Gothic architecture, and an elemental principle in all kinds? nothing, save a little less elegance of workmanship in the supports, a pier substituted for the column, and the soffit of the arch bevelled instead of being square; steps successively apparent in posterior remains. ”

“ In the meantime they gradually developed in detail. The tracery, less floral than geometrical, covered more and more of the marble. Conventionalised cypresses, with tops mysteriously bent, [370] sprang up on either side of the taps. Conventionalised roses, often having a mystic symbolism, became a favourite ornament for the apex of the arch. The occult pentagram or hexagram, symbolic of microcosm and macrocosm and talismanic against evil, were sometimes carved at the corners. And the top, when it was not shaded by broad eaves, was finished in various decorative ways. ”

“ You cannot have the principles of spherical vaulting put in more abstract terms.
Then considering the arch as the section of a vault, the greater number of Gothic arches may be regarded as the intersections of two spherical vaults.
Simple Gothic foliation is merely the triple, quadruple, or variously multiple repetition of such intersection.
And the beauty— (observe this carefully) —the beauty of Gothic arches, and of their foliation, always involves reference to the strength of their structure; but only to their structure as self-sustaining; not as sustaining superincumbent weight. ”

“ The church has no triforium, but the columns are connected by arches at the usual triforium level, and these arches carry a balustraded passageway. The archivolts of this arcade have classic profiles and keystones, and the balustrade is of neo-classic form. In the west front, begun in 1620, neo-classic features are adjusted to Gothic outlines, and the central portal, in the form of a Roman triumphal arch, is furnished with columns modelled after those of De l’Orme which he claimed as his own invention. ”

“ Granted a Church, Saint Thomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the great Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression.
Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,—the visible effort to throw off a visible strain,—never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. ”

“ In Spain, during the second half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, an interesting class of buildings was erected, in which the pointed arch occurs in the vaulting and in the main arcades, but which nevertheless remains strictly Romanesque in character—that is to say, these buildings are massive structures in which there is never any Gothic concentration of vault thrusts, nor any Gothic system of buttresses. Characteristic features of these buildings are the dome on pendentives at the crossing of nave and transept and the semicircular apse vaulted with a semi-dome. ”

“ Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall, The dome of Thought, the Palace of the Soul. ”

“ Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise from green patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the fast-darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a cracked, monotonous mutter, could at intervals be faintly heard. ”

“ He talked to her endlessly about his love of horizontals: how they, the great levels of sky and land in Lincolnshire, meant to him the eternality of the will, just as the bowed Norman arches of the church, repeating themselves, meant the dogged leaping forward of the persistent human soul, on and on, nobody knows where; in contradiction to the perpendicular lines and to the Gothic arch, which, he said, leapt up at heaven and touched the ecstasy and lost itself in the divine. ”

“ As ’tis in an Arch, where each single stone, which if sever’d from the rest would be perhaps defenceless, is sufficiently secur’d by the solidity and entireness of the whole Fabrick of which it is a part. ”

“ When years have past
Over the fallen arch, the ruin'd hall,
It seems but course of time, the one great doom,
Whose influence is alike upon us all; ”

“ The Ziggurat, or pyramidal construction in stages, with the temple or shrine on the top, also owed its peculiar shape to the same original conception: as the gods dwelt on the summit of the Mountain of the World, so their shrines should occupy a position as much like their residence as the feeble means of man would permit. ”

“ The square mass below is solid, and the Ionic columns which are seen on each of its faces are half-indented in the rock itself. The dome is of masonry, and on the eastern side there is a square aperture in it. Generally speaking, the sight of this monument rather confirms the idea suggested by the tomb of Zachariah, that the hewn mass of solid rock, the surmounting pyramid and dome of masonry, and the sculptured frieze and Ionic columns wrought on the faces of the square below were works of different periods ”

“ We see in the Cis-Himâlâyans, in accordance with their greater activity in life, a further progress in art. Merely geometrical figures do not suffice; not monstrous divinities, but animals and men, are the most important subjects of sculpture. Their architecture was without symmetry and proportion, the material of their buildings in no accordance with the monumental tendencies of their construction, and their efforts did not carry them further than the vague attempts of half-settled nomads. ”

“ In their architecture they suffered from one great evil—from a horror of symmetry. Their grand palaces or temples have no ruling element; everything is out of proportion, and though in their detailed ornamentation they were symmetrical, and even eurythmical—the harmony of purpose is often wanting. The thought of building for eternity, however, is always present, whilst no one can deny that in our buildings the ninety years’ lease is to be traced in every corner. ”

“ Men lived in the temple of Zeus, and women spun and gossiped where the golden statue had sat. In the temple of Hera people set up a wine press. Did they know that the little marble baby in the statue near them was the god of the vineyard and had taught men to make wine? Out of broken statues and columns and temple stones they built a wall around the little town to keep out their enemies. Sometimes when they found a bronze warrior or a marble god they must have made strange stories about it, for they had half forgotten those wonderful old Greeks. ”