Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/738

 68o COMPARATIVE ARCHITECTURE. architecture. Domes are sometimes built of brick in horizontal courses, plastered inside and out. Others of a later period are of stone, also of horizontal courses, and with geometrical patterns worked on the external surface, as at the Mosque of Kait-Bey (No. 285), which differs from the Byzantine and Renaissance treatment. Windows are frequently placed in the lower parts (No. 292), which were occasionally ornamented with a fringe of sculptured foliage (No. 297). Domes were nearly always placed over square apartm.ents,as in the Byzantine style, and the Saracenic architect had to face the same difficulty, which he overcame by a series of small pointed niches placed in rows one above the other. Each projected in front of the one below (Nos. 286 d and 291 f), and by easy gradation bringing the square to the circular ring from which the dome sprung (No. 286 d, f). This is known as " stalactite " work, and forms in fact the Saracenic pendentive, a striking contrast with the Byzantine feature, which was always a plain curved surface (Nos. 79 j, 80 b, 82 and 86). Such penden- tives were often constructed of plaster and wood. In India, where domical construction was carefully worked out, a peculiar form of angle or squinch arch was adopted (No. 294 j). E. Columns. — Many of the earlier and later buildings have ready-made columns, re-erected from Roman and Byzantine buildings (No. 288). They were often, therefore, of different design, producing an incongruous effect. At the Alhambra, a type of capital with square upper portion and long necking was evolved (Nos. 290 and 291 a, c). The columns supporting these are very slender, the height being twelve diameters. The capitals in the Alhambra are either treated with conventional scrolls (No. 291 A, c), or are formed with a stalactite treatment (Nos. 290 and 291 j). Such capitals have an upward continuation, of post-like shape, against the sides of which the stilted arch abuts, being supported by a piece of stalactite corbelling, as seen in the same example (No. 290). In India, local Hindu influence produced a short stunted pier quite Eastern in character (No. 298 c, e). F. Mouldings. — Mouldings are unimportant, their place being taken by the elaborate surface decoration already referred to. Such a treatment as the stalactite work, used in rows one above the other, produces, however, a moulded effect in itself, similar to a crowning Classic cornice (Nos. 285, 287 and 290). Mouldings, when used, follow on Byzantine models of plain cavetto and torus, and as a frame to doorways and windows often take the form known as the " billet," which was also used in Romanesque architecture (No. 139 c, g). G. Ornament. — This was chiefly surface ornament, bounded by flat planes, and regulated, as far as motif wsls concerned, by the rules of the Koran, which prohibited the copying of natural objects.