CONSTRUCTION VIII. THE SHAFT 133

is treated like a rich independent shaft, and the figure below, 12, which is half of a true shaft, is treated like a meeting of jambs.

All these four examples belonging to the oblique or Northern system, the curious trefoil plan, 3, lies between the two, as the double quatrefoil next it unites the two. The trefoil is from the Frari, Venice, and has a richly worked capital in the Byzantine manner,-an imitation, I think, of the Byzantine work by the Gothic builders: 1 is to be compared with it, being one of the earliest conditions of the cross shaft, from the atrium of St. Ambrogio at Milan. 13 is the nave pier of St. Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully developed; and 11 another nave pier from Vienne,¹ on the Rhone, of far more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is set to the nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the grandest development I have ever seen of the cross shaft, with satellite shafts in the nooks of it: it is half of one of the great western piers of the cathedral of Bourges, measuring eight feet each side, thirty-two round.* Then the one below (15) is half of a nave pier of Rouen Cathedral, showing the mode in which such conditions as that of Dijon (9) and that of Bourges (12) were fused together into forms of inextricable complexity; (inextricable I mean in the irregularity of proportion and projection, for all of them are easily resolvable into simple systems in connection with the roof ribs). This pier of Rouen is a type of the last condition of the good Gothic; from this point the small shafts begin to lose shape, and run into narrow fillets and ridges, projecting at the same time farther and farther in weak tongue-like

* The entire development of this cross system in connection with the vaulting ribs, has been most clearly explained by Professor Willis (Architecture of Mid. Ages, Chap. IV.²); and I strongly recommend every reader who is inclined to take pains in the matter, to read that chapter. I have been contented, in my own text, to pursue the abstract idea of shaft form.

¹ [Ruskin was at Vienne in April 1850, and several pages of the diary are filled with notes on the cathedral; for other references to it see below, pp. 326, 336, 342, 432.]

² [For fuller reference to this book, see Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. pp. 87, 95, and cf. above, p. 14.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]