Text III. Vaulted ceilings.

" The idea of vaulted ceilings was first developed in Roman baths architecture and was used in temple building afterwards."

In Greek temples horizontal stone beams were supported by tall columns, as exemplified by the famous Parthenon built in the fifth century B.C. on the Acropolis in Athens. With the arrival of Roman architecture the curved arch won its place alongside the straight beam. For functio­nal buildings such as aqueducts, pillars supporting arches were used equally, as in the building of the Roman Colosseum. And alongside the development of the arch in the Roman period we see that of the curved, self-supporting stone ceiling which covers a space—the vault. The different variations on the vault, whose com­mon basic form is the arc, permit a wealth of spatial solutions, from architecturally simple barrel-vaulted spaces via dome constructions to Gothic variations using stellar vaulting and fan vaulting. The dome flourished during the period of Byzantine architec­ture. One of the most important domed churches is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

It was above all the Romans who developed the use of vaulting in architecture. But knowledge of how to create vaults across spaces was not used in the first instance in temple building-where they preferred to stick to Greek models-but in the architecture of Roman baths. Every town in the Roman Empire had its own public baths, which were an important part of social life. The lofty halls of the baths were vaulted, as shown for example in the reconstruction of the huge site of the Baths of Caracalla from the early 3rd century A.D. While the central bathing rooms were vaulted with a hemispherical dome, the elongated rooms were barrel-vaulted, with many arcs placed alongside each other. If two barrel-vaulted rooms of equal height came together, this created a groin vault. The Romans developed the groin vault out of the barrel vault and used it to cover wide spaces. The vault was used even for places of religious worship such as temples and early Christian basil­icas, particularly from late Antiquity onwards. The Pantheon in Rome, a temple dedicated to all the gods, with its dome of over 43 meters in diameter, occupies a special place in the dome architecture of ancient Rome.

At first the groin vault maintained its position of great importance in medieval architecture. In church building after the turn of the millennium a plan with three aisles was the norm, with two side aisles flanking a wider, higher central aisle. In Romanesque churches, or basilicas, as these three-aisled buildings are called, the narrower side aisles were the first to be vaulted, while the central aisle retained its flat ceiling. The use of vaulting in church aisles is one of the great innovations of Romanesque architecture. Where groin vaulting was introduced in Romanesque architecture, the space to be covered was at the outset still very small. The architects began with small spaces and gradually vaulted the entire space of the church.

In Speyer Cathedral the vaulting of the individual architectural sections similarly took place in several stages. The cathedral, the burial place of the Salian* emperors and kings, is the greatest early Romanesque building in the Western world. The monumental three-aisled basilica was rebuilt and extended many times, and in this process it was gradually filled with vaulting. Around the middle of the eleventh century the groin vaults in the under­ground burial chapel, the crypt, as well as those in the towers and side aisles of the nave were com­pleted. Because of its ridges, the intersecting lines of the surfaces of the vaults which arise due to the fusion of two barrel vaults, this kind of vaulting is also known as cross vaulting. The ridges, which run diagonally, divide the vault into four sections that ensure an equal distribution of the forces created by the vault. In spite of the well-developed technology, several decades passed before the vaulting of the large expanse of the nave was attempted at Speyer Cathedral.

The nave was initially flat-ceilinged and was only later covered with groin vaulting in the years around 1100.The first time vaulting was used extensively was in the building of Durham Cathedral in England.

This three-aisled basilica was begun in 1093, and was completed a good three decades later. This enormous church, 143 meters long, is characterized by strong walls and massive round arches. The architectural forms and technology of cathedral building were brought to England by the Norman conquerors, when William, duke of Normandy, occupied the country in 1066. As a result Norman building styles spread into areas north of the English Channel. In 1100 the choir of the church saw the introduction of a high vault, which offered a clear contrast to the massive forms of the Romanesque style. The nave vault was finally introduced instead of the orig­inally planned flat ceiling. By 1133 vaulting had been perfected, with the addition of a new type of vault. Thin ridges divide the areas of the vaulting into four sections and below these edges thin ribs are insert­ed—unlike the crypt of Speyer Cathedral. In this rib vault the rod-like ribs bear the thrust and the cells are stretched between them. In Durham Cathedral the thrust of the vault is diverted by powerful round pillars whose diameter measures as much as six meters. They are decorated with different patterns, including the zigzag form typical of Norman art. The rib vault soon developed into the standard type of vaulting for the great Gothic cathedrals. By sup­porting the vaults by means of buttresses and flying buttresses, architects were able to attain spectacular heights with their vaults. The Gothic rib vault was best suited to cover all types of spaces. Its use of pointed arches gave the architect more creative freedom as he could vary the width and height of the vault's sections.

The church of Saint-Denis in Paris is one of the first to be built using rib vaulting in the choir. Its high interior was completely vaulted as early as the first quarter of the twelfth century. In the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, which was begun just a short time later, the vaulting already shows the Gothic form of reaching to the heavens.

The church is 130 meters long; its two aisles flank the nave whose vault is an already impressive 35 meters high. The sexpartite vault of the nave of Notre-Dame was completed in c. 1200.

In the late Gothic period rib vaulting developed into ever-more imaginative variations. In the different artistic landscapes regional phenomena emerged in which the rib, originally important to the con­struction, increasingly became a decorative element, and ultimately covered the surface of the vault as an entire network of ribs. Decorative types of rib in stellar, net and fan vaulting evolved in England and Germany in particular. The development of a vault structure divided into small sections can be seen in the Lady Chapel of Gloucester Cathedral, for example. This apsidal chapel was completed around 1500 and displays a richly decorated vault—a network of ribs with stone bosses set at their intersecting points. The Renaissance saw a return to barrel vaulting in church architecture. In addition this period brought a new flourishing of dome building, beginning with the construction of the dome in Florence.

Notes:

Salian - Салическая (Франконская) династия (нем. Salier) — династия королей Восточно-Франкского королевства (Германии) и императоров Священной Римской империи.