Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/82

Rh of three shafts both in the main and in the intermediate piers—the longitudinal ribs not being independently provided for below the springing of the vaults, but rising from shafts carried by the same capitals which support the diagonal ribs.

Sexpartite vaults occur again in the Cathedral of Laon, a building nearly contemporaneous with the nave of Paris, and here we meet with still another arrangement of supports (Fig. 25). The ground-story piers are, as in Paris, simple round columns whose capitals support the vaulting shafts;

FIG. 25.

but instead of three such shafts to each pier, an arrangement which affords no provision for the alternately varying number of ribs to be carried, there are five shafts to the main piers and three to the intermediate ones, thus giving each rib in the vault its own independent support. In other words, the vaulting system of Laon is the same as that of the choir of Paris, except that the shafts which carry its longitudinal ribs, instead of resting, at the main piers, on the capitals from which the diagonal ribs spring, descend with the other vaulting shafts to the ground-story capitals. From this