Of one hundred and sixty-five examples of such series examined, only
seven do not conform to the principles we have considered, and these
are proportionately unsatisfactory. Forty-five illustrate buildings
where the arches go completely around the outside of a structure,
so that the series instead of requiring an end simply runs into
itself again. It will be noticed further, that unlike series of
columns around rectangular Greek temples, these are around circular
structures where the series does not change its direction suddenly
but by degrees. With the exception of courts and cloisters where the
observer stands within and sees the whole series, these are all around
domes, baptisteries, etc., where the end arches in the field at any
one point of view are seen in perspective gradually fading off and
yet leading attention on around the building. There may indeed be
arches which go across square-cornered buildings or even around them,
but in these cases some other device is necessary to make each side
a finished series in itself. The mere fact of its continuance around
a corner where it cannot be seen from the same point of view is not
enough. (These various arrangements of arches on a flat façade will be
taken up later.) Rows of arches are often used around towers square
as well as round, but towers from their very shape and size allow the
observer to see different sides from nearly the same point of view,
so the series is not broken up into sections on different sides of
the tower as it is in a larger building. Twenty more examples are of
arches in interiors and are all of arches down a nave, with either a
regular arch or an arch motif carried across the apse. It might be
supposed that an arrangement of arches in an interior would be more
difficult than on an exterior surface, since the genius of an arch
is its outward thrust and its tendency to run on. Without careful
treatment it would spoil the interior by trying to overstep its bounds;
by making certain walls look wider than others; the arched sections
utterly discrete in general character from the plain or otherwise
decorated section. In point of fact, the use of the arch-series in
interiors is quite conventionalized, and all the illustrations are of
loggias, or of churches where the arch goes down the nave and in a
more or less modified form across the apse. In the Sistine Chapel the
arched windows go down the side walls and across the end in a vaulted
double-arch. In some cases a series of Roman arches down the nave has
a more or less pointed arch across the apse, but in every case the
continuity has been kept in some way so that the series is unbroken.
Moreover the columns in the cathedral naves are often so high and the
arches so proportionally narrow that the pillar instead of the arch is
taken as the unit. This is somewhat true in St. Mark, Venice, also in
St. Sophia, Constantinople, where the large arches are divided into
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