
152 ARCHITECTURE. ’ 
the oak (jig. 5); and even the cabbage (jig. 6). One of the prettiest 
fantastic foliated capitals is composed of long, many-lobed leaves, over- 
lapping at the top, and forming small volutes. Among the flowers met 
with on capitals the principal ones are the rose (jigs. 7, 8) and a fantastic 
flower (jig. 9). Small capitals of the 13th century have usually projecting 
foliated volutes at the corners, to which in the 14th century a row of leaves 
was added (jig. 14). In the 15th century the foliated decorations were 
meagre and stiff, but in the 16th century they again approached the forms | 
of classic antiquity. The capitals of the 11th century appear nearly all 
smooth, with here and there a few rudely hewn pedicles. In the 12th 
century they are of a more elegant style and of a nobler form. In the 18th 
century, the decline of art is perceptible also in the capitals, which are 
overloaded with leaves and knobs (jig. 10). In the 14th century the 
capitals have two rows of deeply lobed leaves, and the abacus is round or 
polygonal instead of quadrangular. In the 16th century, finally, the capitals 
are entirely without gracefulness or richness. The Corinthian abacus 
(jig. 11) was changed considerably, and finally made so thick, that it 
appeared to crush the capital instead of decorating it. 
Apertures or interruptions in the walls, whether they be windows, doors, 
or only niches or recesses, are closed above in various ways; either by two 
straight oblique lines, the sides of a triangle, meeting over the centre of the 
aperture (jig. 12), or by gradually narrowing courses of stone, a straight 
line forming the top (fig. 14), or by a curved line or arch. An arch need 
not be complete; the one-sided or ascending arch is on the contrary very 
frequent in the German style, employed to connect a lower outer wall with 
a higher uninterrupted inner wall (jig. 13), and serving instead of a buttress 
tothe latter. Complete arches appear in the middle ages in a great variety 
of forms. If the arch be a true arc, z. e. described from a single centre, it 
can have four different shapes: 1. Less than a semicircle, or the flat arch 
(jig. 15). 2. A full semicircle, or the Romanesque arch (jig. 16). 3. More 
than a semicircle, or the Moorish arch (fig. 17). 4. A semicircle whose 
eentre lies above the level of the imposts, or the overtopped arch (pl. 36, 
jig. 2). The centre may be often considerably above that level when, for 
instance, the arches of intercolumniations or apertures of different width 
are to have their keystones in a horizontal line without giving up the strictly 
semicircular arch. The overtopping will then be in proportion to the 
decrease in width. A variety of the semicircular arch is the trefoil arch, 
which is formed by three semicircles intersecting each other and producing 
two points (pl. 38, jig. 18). This construction is very frequent in Ger- 
many and England. The three first named varieties of the semicircular arch 
appear together in the 11th century, the fourth exclusively in the 12th, 
whilst the trefoil arch is represented at all times from the 11th to the 16th 
century. 
The simple pointed arch, the characteristic one of the present period, is of 
seven different forms, five of which belong to the 12th century, two 
exclusively to the 15th. The first and oldest form is composed of two ares 
whose centres are but slightly removed to both sides from the centre of the 
152 
