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The word is used of the lowest part of the entablature in classical architecture, presumably from Greek archi - main and Latin trabs - beam, resting directly on the abacus of the capital. It was also used in Ruskin’s time of the parts - the lintel and jambs - surrounding a door. See Works, 9.193:
The reader has probably heard of the architectural division of superstructure into architrave, frieze and cornice; parts which have been appointed by great artists to all their work, in the same spirit in which great rhetoricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium, and narration and peroration.
See Works, 9.389 and following where the arch is presented as ‘nothing but an architrave bent round’ and the relationship between Gothic and classical is presented as a fight for precedence between the lines of the architecture and the voussoirs of an arch. The right hand side Plate XIII at Works, 9.348 has an image of San Pietro at Pistoia which makes Ruskin's point about the Romanesque ‘peace treaty’ negotiated between the two. The peace however was broken and the architrave ‘worsted’ and forced to appear in ‘mediaeval costume’ as illustrated in Plate XIX facing Works, 9.390.
Compare Notebook M p.14 and Notebook N p.35L on the ‘expansion of the Greek temple into the Gothic niche’.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]