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See the references to clustered piers and clustered shafts at Notebook M2 p.126, where they are cited at San Michele, Pavia, and defined as one of the principal roots of Gothic effect, and at Notebook M2 p.162, where they are cited as evidence for Ruskin’s view that it is to be seen as an intermediate step between Romanesque and Gothic. There are other references to clustered shafts in Milan Cathedral at Notebook M2 p.14backL and in Lyons cathedral at Notebook M2 p.170.
Ruskin cites Willis (1835) at Notebook M2 p.161 in relation to clustered piers at Valence and Lindsay (1847) at Notebook M2 p.126 in relation to clustered piers at San Michele, Pavia.
Lindsay (1847) II p.8 lists what he sees as ‘the principal characteristics of the new architecture, as exhibited in the Lombard Cathedral’. One of these characteristics is:
The columns of the nave, no longer isolated, are clustered so as to form compound piers, massive and heavy - their capitals either rude imitations of the Corinthian, or, especially in the earlier structures, sculptured with grotesque imagery.
Willis (1835) pp.24-5 distinguishes classical from Gothic in terms of different structural principles:
the leading principle is to be found in the increased multiplicity of parts, and in a system which affected to support them all independently; arranging them in groups, in opposition to the classical scheme in which the parts are simple, and bound together by the dominant cornice.
The clustered column is one of the most prominent features of a Gothic vaulted room, and is therefore set forth as a leading characteristic of the style. But the clustering of a pier is not merely a kind of enriched fluting, for every shaft and moulding which compose it bears a definite relation to the parts which lie above it, every one of which receives, in the decorative sense, an independent support of some member of the cluster. (pp. 24-5)
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]