Trompe
A trompe (English: squinch ; Spanish: trompa ) is a corner-shaped niche-shaped vaulted gusset with an opening facing down. In architecture, trumpets are used to transform a design with a square floor plan into an octagonal and ultimately circular one and thereby provide static and structural support - for example the crossing of a church building in the transition to the dome .
description
With a trumpet dome, the four corners of a square are bevelled to create an octagon . These bevels are built in the form of arches with a niche that tapers upwards. As a rule, two or more arches are staggered in order to better adapt the base of the trompe to the right angle of the lower part of the structure.
As with the pendentive dome , a closed or windowed drum can also be inserted above the trumpets , which serves to raise and illuminate the dome and the crossing area.
history
It is unclear whether trumpets were already known in Roman antiquity; there are a few early examples in Sassanid architecture . In Byzantine architecture they take a back seat to the pendants and appear only rarely. Probably based on the Armenian and Georgian architecture , they find their way into the Romanesque and Islamic architecture of the Middle Ages. In the Gothic they almost completely disappear; in the renaissance and baroque periods they mostly take a back seat to the more elegant pendentives and are therefore rarely found.
decor
Trumpets are only decorated with decorative decorations in rare cases. In Islamic art, they are sometimes designed in the shape of a shell or covered with muqarnas stucco decoration. In the former Ste-Foy abbey church in Conques , four angel figures are fitted into the trumpets; the Cathedral of Valencia shows an octagonal lantern tower with scalloped squinches and - added at the beginning of the 19th century - four evangelists .
photos
Ardashir Palace, southern Iran (3rd century)
Odsun Cathedral , Armenia (8th century)
Santa Cruz , Castañeda , Spain (12th century)
Qila-i-Kuhna Mosque in Delhi, India (16th century)
literature
- Wilfried Koch: Architectural style. The great standard work on European architecture from antiquity to the present. Orbis, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-572-00689-9 .
