Bezel (fine arts)

In the fine arts and architecture, a lunette or lunette is a semicircular or segment-shaped framed wall field (also called arched field), which is located above windows or - in the manner of a supraport - above doors . They are often decorated with painterly or plastic jewelry. Arched picture panels in a winged altar and semicircular picture fields on antique steles are also called lunettes.
The name comes from the French lunette , diminutive of moon (little moon ).
A large, semicircular field of view over a (especially medieval) portal is called a tympanum , while the small segment or semicircular fields over doors and windows of modern architecture are more often called “lunette”.
Examples
- Giuseppe Modena da Lucca above the portals of the Cathedral of Pisa , Italy , see figure central portal , figure left portal , figure right portal
- Philipp Veits The seven fat years , lunette of the fresco cycle of Casa Bartholdy, Berlin , Alte Nationalgalerie , see illustration
- Pietro Peruginos winged altar (polyptych) in the Collezione Torlonia in Rome , see illustration
- Giovanni Bellini's winged altar Tryptych of St Sebastian see illustration
- Lunettes decorated with frescoes by Michelangelo over the windows in the Sistine Chapel in Rome
- Jali in the Sidi Sayed Mosque in Ahmedabad, India
Further use
The small crescent-shaped figures on the comb marble paper are known as lunettes.
literature
- Wilfried Koch : A brief history of architecture. Illustrated pocket dictionary with more than 1100 individual drawings by the author. Special edition. Orbis Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-572-00502-7 , p. 165.