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Roman Domical Vaulting Giclee Print Buhlmann, J. 18 in. x 24 in. Buy at AllPosters.com Framed Mounted An arched covering in stone or brick over any building. One of the earliest examples of vaulting is the chamber of Harem in the Assyrian Palace of Sargon, Khorsabad ( 722-705 B.C.) excavated in 1864; the entire roof of this palace was probably vaulted with huge blocks of compressed clay, supported on continuous walls. Another early example of vaulting is the ruined palace at Ctesiphon ( A. D. 450), where a great central arched porch about 83 ft wide leads into an immense throne room covered with a remarkable vault supported on walls 24 ft thick; it is elliptical in form and obviously based on Assyrian prototypes. Some authorities consider that this great vault of brick is a reproduction of the native Sassanian architecture where such constructions were formed with bundles of reeds and rammed earth.
The Romans excelled in the use of vaults of various kinds. The barrel or tunnel vault was borne throughout its length on the two parallel walls of a rectangular apartment. The cross vault was formed by the intersection of two semicircular vaults of equal span and used over a square apartment. When cross vaults were built over long halls or corridors the hall was divided by piers into square bays, each of which was covered with a cross vault which allowed of the insertion of windows in the upper part of the walls as in the terpidarium of the Baths of Caracalla and the Baths of Diocletian, Rome. The lines of intersection of these cross vaults are known as groins.
The Roman system of vaulting was continued in the Romanesque period, but an innovation was demanded by the necessity to surmount the difficulty of vaulting an oblong church nave where there were differences in height between semicircular arches over spans of varying width. The problem was only satisfactorily solved when the pointed arch was introduced in Gothic vaulting. Gothic vaulting consists of a framework of stone ribs which support thin stone panels. The difficulty of vaulting oblong compartments was overcome by the use of the pointed arch over the shorter spans, while the semicircular arch was for some time retained for the diagonal or longer spans.
It was the solution of the problems connected with vaulting which very largely determined the character of medieval architecture. The problem for the medieval architect was to construct a stone vault over the lofty nave of a church of the basilican type while leaving clerestory windows in the nave walls above the aisle roofs. He replaced the simple groins of the Roman architects by specially constructed ribs on which thin vaulting panels were laid. The weight of the stone vault exerted considerable thrust which resulted in the introduction of such novel features as buttresses and pinnacles to resist it, while the numerous ribs required for their support novel types of piers.
Anglo-Saxon vaulting was based on the Roman, as in the porch at Monkwearmouth. Norman vaulting was either of the barrel type as in St John's Chapel, Tower of London or the groined cross type as in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral (1096-1107), while sometimes in oblong bays the vaulting ribs across the shorter span were stilted or slightly pointed. The pointed arch came into general use in the 13th century. The plain four-part ribbed vault primarily constructed as a framework of diagonal and transverse ribs was chiefly used at this period as in the naves of Durham and Salisbury. Intermediate ribs known as tiercerons were later inserted between the transverse and diagonal ribs to give additiorial support to the panels, as in the nave of Westminster Abbey. Ridge ribs were next introduced to resist the thrust of the opposing tiercerons. The courses of the vault panels meet at the ridge in zigzag lines as at Lincoln, Exeter and churches in south-western France.
Vaulting of the Decorated Period is elaborate in character. Lierne ribs were added which merely followed the curved surface of the panel and gave an intricate appearance to an otherwise simple vault. The star-shaped pattern thus produced is known as stellar vaulting and examples are to be found at Gloucester, Ely, Wells, Bristol and Winchester. Carved bosses originated as keystones against which the ribs abutted and also resulted from the need for disguising the awkward mitres made by the meeting of moulded ribs. In the 14th century the increase in the number of ribs led to a corresponding increase in the number of bosses which gave to Gothic vaults their extremely ornamental and web-like character.
The intricate stellar vaulting of the late 14th century led gradually to the type known as fan, palm or conoidal vaulting, first used in the cloisters at Gloucester, in which the rising ribs are formed at equal angles on the surface of the inverted concave cones and are thus of the same arcs, and these are connected at different heights by horizontal lierne ribs. In fan vaulting the ribs and panels are often formed of the same piece of stone instead of the panels resting as separate stones on the ribs, so that fan vaulting represents a return to the Roman method of construction and the ribs lose their structural value. Fan vaulting is confined to England and there are examples at King's College, Cambridge, Sherborne Abbey, the Divinity Schools, Oxford, St George's Chapel, Windsor.
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