Pinnacle
A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was mainly used in Gothic architecture.
The pinnacle had two purposes:
- Ornamental – adding to the loftiness and verticity of the structure. They sometimes ended with statues, such as in Milan Cathedral.
- Structural – the pinnacles were very heavy and often rectified with flying buttresses to contain the stress of the structure vaults and roof. This was done by adding compressive stress(a result of the pinnacle weight) to the thrust vector and thus shifting it downwards rather than sideways.
History
The accounts of
- Then he (Satan) brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.[2]
Some[who?] have stated that there were no pinnacles in the Romanesque style, but conical caps to circular buttresses, with finial terminations, are not uncommon in France at very early periods. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc gives examples from Saint-Germer-de-Fly Abbey and the Basilica of Saint-Remi, and there is one of similar form at the west front of Rochester Cathedral.
In the 12th-century Romanesque two examples have been cited, one from
In this and the following styles, mainly in Gothic architecture, the pinnacle seems generally to have had its appropriate uses. It was a weight to counteract the thrust of the vaults, particularly where there were flying buttresses; it stopped the tendency to slip of the stone copings of the gables, and counterpoised the thrust of spires; it formed a pier to steady the elegant perforated parapets of later periods; and in France especially served to counterbalance the weight of overhanging corbel tables, huge gargoyles, etc.
In the Early English period the small buttresses frequently finished with
In France pinnacles, like spires, seem to have been in use earlier than in England. There are small pinnacles at the angles of the tower in the Saintes Cathedral. At Roullet-Saint-Estèphe there are pinnacles in a similar position, each composed of four small shafts, with caps and bases surmounted with small pyramidal spires. In all these examples the towers have semicircular-headed windows.
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The early-Gothic Notre-Dame de Paris. Arrows show forces (black:forces of cathedral on the ground, green: forces of ground on cathedral). The weight of pinnacles helps keep the line of thrust inside the buttress.
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Pinnacles with statues on the roof of Milan Cathedral
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Pinacles at Saintes Cathedral
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Architectural drawing of aVotive Church, in Vienna.
See also
- Gothic cathedrals and churches
- Gothic architecture
- High Gothic
- Rayonnant
- Cathedral architecture
- Pinnacle (geology)
References
- ^ On the uncertainty of the meaning of this Greek phrase, see Joachim Jeremias, “Die ,Zinne‘ des Tempels (Mt. 4,5; Lk. 4,9),” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina 59.3/4 (1936): 195-208 (for an English translation of this article, click here).
- ^ Luke 4:9
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pinnacle". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 628. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the