124 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

in the form of the grouped shaft, which open the way to every branch of its endless combinations, Southern or Northern.

§ 15. (1.) If the group at d₃, Fig. 14, be taken from under its loading, and have its centre filled up, it will become a quatrefoil; and it will represent, in their form of most frequent occurrence, a family of shafts, whose plans are foiled figures, trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils, etc.; of which a trefoiled example, from the Frari at Venice, is the third in Plate 2, and a quatrefoil from Salisbury the eighth. It is rare, however, to find in Gothic architecture shafts of this family composed of a large number of foils, because multifoiled shafts are seldom true grouped shafts, but are rather canaliculated conditions of massy piers. The representatives of this family may be considered, as the quatrefoil on the Gothic side of the Alps; and the Egyptian multifoiled shaft on the south, approximating to the general type, b, Fig. 16.

§ 16. Exactly opposed to this great family is that of shafts which have concave curves instead of convex on each of their sides; but these are not, properly speaking, grouped shafts at all, and their proper place is among decorated piers; only they must be named here in order to mark their exact opposition to the foiled system. In their simplest form, represented by c, Fig. 16, they have no representatives in good architecture, being evidently weak and meagre; but approximations to them exist in late Gothic, as in the vile cathedral of Orleans,¹ and in modern cast-iron shafts. In their fully

¹ [Ruskin was there in 1840, and had then written of it (in Letters to a College Friend) as “the vilest piece of architecture in Europe”: see Vol. I. p. 430.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]