Free Example of Church Architectural Terms Essay

Church Architectural Terms. Romanesque Church Doors are of three different types:

• Round-arched entrance
•  Recessed or stepped portal
•  Recessed portal with columns

The Features   includes tympana, capitals, and archivolts

 The Romanesque Church Windows are of four types:

• Simple curved headed window
•  fixed semicircular headed   lights with middle colonette
• Trefoil-headed window (William, 1989).

The Romanesque Church Ceilings are four types

• Flat ceiling version of an early Christian basilica
•  Gradually replaced by the simple barrel vault
•  meeting point of transept vaults, as well as the nave mausoleum, result in a groin vault

Romanesque style: In General (6th-12th centuries)

Romanesque frequently refers to all works of this era, encompassing later Norman variations characterized by:  profound articulated masonry construction amid minute openings,    the round arch and barrel vault,   buttress,  vaulting rib and shaft, Cylindrical apse and chapels,   central and western square,  polygonal towers,   Ornamentation stylistically rendered in animal and plants forms.  (William, 1989)

Definitions

Just to have a clear understanding of what we are talking about here the following definitions were considered necessary

• Vault - a masonry roof or top limit constructed on the arch principle.
• Barrel   vault – this is a semi-cylindrical in cross-section which is in effect a deep arch or an uninterrupted series of arches, one at the back the other, above an oblong space
• Groin vault – this is formed at the point at which two-barrel (tunnel) vaults interconnect at right angles.
• Ribbed vault - outline of ribs or arches under the intersections of the vaulting sections.

A more complex and efficient type of vaulting was constantly needed because of the system failure the, lighting examples here included: Baptistery, Florence, Italy, Santa Maria Novella Church, Florence, Italy, Façade, Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy (William, 1989).