"Pediment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was painted white, and the windows not only had sashes, but these sashes were supplied, contrary to custom, with glass. In most cases the aperture where glass should be is stuifed with an old hat or a petticoat. The door had not only all its parts entire, but was embellished with mouldings and a pediment. I gathered from these tokens that this was the abode not only of rural competence and innocence, but of some beings raised by education and fortune above the intellectual mediocrity ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... remarkably fine Romanesque edifice with four elegant towers, and two domes. The towers are adorned with odd figures of animals and gurgoyles. Most of this church dates from the 12th century. In the pediment is "the figure of a woman with a mural crown, mounted on an animal, whose four heads (angel, lion, ox, eagle,) are symbols of the four Evangelists, the whole being ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... that mystical and providential sense, which all, indeed, proclaims in that spot, where the Mamertine prison relates the trial of St. Peter, where the portico of the temple of Faustine serves as a pediment to the Church of St. Laurent, where Ste.-Marie-Liberatrice rises upon the site of the Temple of Vesta—'Sancta Maria, libera nos a poenis inferni'—Montfanon always added when he spoke of it, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the artistic decorations of this wonderful edifice. The two pediments of the temple were decorated with magnificent compositions of statuary, each consisting of about twenty entire figures of colossal size; the one on the western pediment representing the birth of Minerva, and the other, on the eastern pediment, the contest between that goddess and Neptune for the possession of Attica. Under the outer cornice were ninety-two groups, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the middle and the extremities of a pediment to support a statue or other ornament, or the statue or ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... had to be read that day, and the ancient city had done all that could be done under many depressing conditions to receive the royal message with fitting honors. Flags that had lain long furled, floated from parapet and pediment, from window and balcony, from tower and turret. Doors were thrown open that had not always swung wide on their hinges, and open house was kept ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... a critic as a sculptor. My writings, sir, are universally appreciated. To find fault with them shows you are unfit for our acquaintance; and with regard to Mr Pitskiver's recommendation to the city building committee, and your donkey to adorn the pediment of the Mansion-house—you have of course given up all hopes of any interest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... rigid machine-lace curtain is all of roses and lilies in its very construction, over the muslin blinds an impotent sprig is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, in the plaster picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, in the pediment of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the barometer, in the finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger-plates of the 'grained' door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait or to be traced the stale inspiration of the flower. And what is this bossiness around the grate ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... consider," he asked her once, when they stood before the great group of the Pediment, "why it is that these things are so beautiful; why, although they are bare of colour and all that stands for life to us in art, they are more than life? It's because they point to a state of being exquisitely conform to the laws of being. Such a perfect conformity soothes us into believing ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... successions in the first families." Then I got talking about my visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman, Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition; I told him about the Capitol and the statues for the pediment, and Crawford's Liberty, and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... went to the theatre of the Little Trianon, a perfect jewel, a gem, with its two Ionic columns, its pediment in which Love is holding a lyre and a laurel wreath; and its ceiling representing Olympus, the work of Lagrenee; and its curtain, on which are two nymphs supporting Marie Antoinette's coat-of-arms. It was there that, August 19, 1785, the Queen played Rosina, in "The Barber of Seville," and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... columns, with, quaint heads as capitals. The church is entered by two descending steps. The font is modern, Norman in style, the bowl having eight semi-circular fluttings, being supported by eight columns raised on a stone pediment. The west window is filled with good modern glass from Munich. The central subject is the Saviour’s body being taken down from the Cross; the left subject is the Saviour bearing His Cross; the right, the body being borne away. This was a memorial, placed in the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... its highest pitch of perfection. The central porch is divided into five compartments on each side—forming an angle of about forty-five degrees with the door-way. The lower parts of these divisions contain each a statue, of the size of life, upon its respective pediment. The upper parts, which blend with the arch-like construction, are filled with small statues, upon pediments, having a sort of brilliant, fretted appearance. All these figures are representations of characters in Scripture. Again, above this archway, forming the central ornaments of the sharper ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Greek art: nothing so ugly, nothing so wise. Classical sculptors in statues destined for lofty situations preserved the absolute truth of form, but their diligence was consumed by distance. What was true in the studio lost its truth on a lofty pediment or frieze. They preserved accuracy of form, but they sacrificed accuracy of appearance; whereas relative truth was in reality far more important—until, indeed, the time comes when the lights and shades of the studio are reproduced in some ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... some supernatural warning, the shadow of the divine wrath projected on its heedless ministers; an impression heightened by the fact that, just opposite the cross, a lively figure of Pan, surmounting the pediment of the theatre, seemed to fling ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the walls of a temple, its facade or its pediment. Of this style of work is the famous frieze of the Panathenaic procession which was carved around the Parthenon, representing young Athenian women on the day of the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... stories in height, with a hipped roof rising above a handsome cornice with prominent modillions and surmounted by a balustraded belvedere. Two large chimneys, much nearer together than is ordinarily the case, emerge within the inclosed area of the belvedere deck. A heavy pediment springs from the cornice above the pedimental doorway, and this repetition of the motive imparts a pleasing interest and emphasis to the facade. The subordinate cornice at the second-floor level is most unusual and may perhaps reflect the influence ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... towards the portico of the Chamber of Deputies with its high pediment and its grey columns. Down the river they could see faintly the Eiffel Tower with a drift of mist athwart it, like a section of spider web spun between the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... wounded in them. During the siege of Troy Apollo guided the arrow of Paris to this spot, and the great leader of the Greeks was killed. It is believed that the warrior in this picture who is about to send his arrow is Paris. In the central or highest part of the pediment the goddess Minerva stands and tries to cover the fallen body of Achilles with her shield. These figures are on the side where the space grows narrower. You can judge of what the action and spirit of the whole must be ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... reared its columns for fully a century. It was of classic architecture, with pediment, balconied hall, echoing corridors, and furniture that seemed never to have been moved from the place it had occupied in her ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... districts becomes more favorable. There are a few bay trees planted from block to block; and ever and anon the monotonous house walls recede, giving space to display some temple, like the Fane of Hephestos[*] near the Market Place, its columns and pediment flashing not merely with white marble, but with the green, scarlet, and gold wherewith the Greeks did not hesitate to ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... SALOON.—Elgin Marbles; Metopes of the Parthenon; Eastern Frieze; Northern Frieze; Western Frieze; Southern Frieze; Eastern Pediment; Western Pediment; Temple of the Erectheum; Temple of Theseus; Lantern ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... piles and fanes of the city of the Ptolemies. It was a magnificent picture,—a "picture" because the colours everywhere were as bright as though laid on freshly by a painter's brush. The stonework of the buildings, painted to gaudy hues, brought out all the details of column, cornice, and pediment. Here Demetrius pointed out the Royal Palace, here the Theatre; here, farther inland, the Museum, where was the great University; in the distance the whole looked like a painting in miniature. Only there was more movement in this picture: a splendid ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Turkish minaret. The southwest face was the front, and was pierced by a Moorish arch fitted with glass doors, which could be secured on occasion by gates of fantastically hammered iron. The arch was enshrined by a Palladian portico, which rose to the roof, and was surmounted by an open pediment, in the cleft of which stood a black-marble figure of an Egyptian, erect, and gazing steadfastly at the midday sun. On the ground beneath was an Italian terrace with two great stone elephants at the ends of the balustrade. The windows on the upper story were, like ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... either side. Above these are triangular pediments, and above these again, and in alignment along the balustrade, are statues of ten of the Apostles—five to each front. The sculpture on the northern pediment depicts the royal arms, with angels bearing palm branches for supporters, and on the southern is a Phoenix with ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... leaning against the after-partition; the aquarium, in which bloomed the most wonderful productions of the sea—marine plants, zoophytes, chaplets of pearls of inestimable value; and, finally, his eyes rested on this device, inscribed over the pediment of the ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... former you should send me your idea, your dimensions; for the latter, don't you rebuild your old one, though in another place? A pretty greenhouse I never saw; nor without immoderate expense can it well be an agreeable object. Mr. Pitt thinks a mere portico without a pediment, and windows retrievable in summer, would be the best plan you could have. If so, don't you remember something of that kind, which you liked at Sir Charles Cotterel's at Rousham? But a fine greenhouse must be on a more ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Apollo himself, near the sacred tripod on which the Pythia sat to prophesy, was to be seen a strange object—a sort [20] of coffin or cinerary urn with the inscription, "Here lieth the body of Dionysus, the son of Semele." The pediment of the great temple was divided between them—Apollo with the nine Muses on that side, Dionysus, with perhaps three times three Graces, on this. A third of the whole year was held sacred to him; the four winter months were the months of Dionysus; ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and enriched with a ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... be wholly artificial, that is to say, the owner appeared to have chosen a particular spot on the face of the living rock, and, attacking it, had begun work by hewing out first the entrance—which was usually rectangular in shape, ornamented with columns supporting a sculptured pediment—and thence proceeding to excavate inward as many apartments as were needed for the accommodation of his family. Such a structure would, if executed by the members of the family alone, require many years of continuous labour to complete; but Pousa ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... erected within the Communion railing of the Church at Haworth, to the memory of the deceased members of the Bronte family. The tablet is of white Carrara marble on a ground of dove-coloured marble, with a cornice surmounted by an ornamental pediment of chaste design. Between the brackets which support the tablet, is inscribed the sacred monogram I.H.S., in old ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... foundations on a like number of bases and pedestals crowned with beautiful and curiously wrought capitals. On top of them arose the entablatures with their friezes, architraves, fluted mouldings, and pediment of the arch crowned with balusters—all regulated to the requirements of art without detracting one jot from the idea [that they expressed]. That structure ended in a cupola, [4] which well supplied the place of the sky, when it was seen reflecting ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... way, they reached the roof. Christine tripped over it as lightly as a swallow. Their eyes swept the empty space between the three domes and the triangular pediment. She breathed freely over Paris, the whole valley of which was seen at work below. She called Raoul to come quite close to her and they walked side by side along the zinc streets, in the leaden avenues; ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... painted cinnamon color. Beneath the cornice was a yellow frieze with figures of dancing children, imitated from the works of Donatello, and very unskilfully executed. There was a meagre portico of four columns, painted red, and a plain pediment, painted yellow. The colors, meant to match those of the walls, contrasted disagreeably with them, having been applied more recently, apparently by a color-blind artist. The door beneath the portico stood open. Sir Charles rang the ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... it seemed a ruined colonnade of many pillars, whose base and pediment were buried in the earth, supporting a long parallelogram of entablature and cornices. But a second glance showed it to be a one-storied building, upheld above the Marsh by numberless piles placed at regular distances; some of them sunken or inclined from the perpendicular, increasing the first illusion. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... foreshortened, like a bleak mountain-head, and then there appeared, framed by the house-fronts, the sculptured figure of the ancient lawgiver, with a gesture at once vehement and dignified, that crowned the top of the pediment. Then followed the hush of the mighty church, the dumb falling of many foot-falls upon the floor, the great space of the dome, in which the mist seemed to float, the liberal curves, the firm proportions of arch and pillar; the fallen daylight seemed to swim and filter ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the expression of the features, the drawing of the figures. There never was such a delineator of bone and muscle as Michael Angelo. His frescoes stand out in bold relief from the walls of the Vatican, like the sculptures of Phidias from the pediment of the Parthenon. He was the founder of the school of painting both at Rome and Florence—that great school which, disdaining the representation of still life, and all the subordinate appliances of the art, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... destined as the national monument to the great men of France, and the inscription, "Aux Grands Hommes la Patrie Reconnaissante," which it still bears, was then first placed under the sculptures of the pediment. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... building. In Fleet-street are two entrances, one to the Inner, and the other to the Middle Temple. The latter has a front in the manner of Inigo Jones, of brick, ornamented with four large stone pilastres, of the Ionic order, with a pediment. It is too narrow, and being lofty, wants proportion. The passage to which it leads, although designed for carriages, is ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... wolves sometime pursue the diligence in winter. The road, which is bound for Vivarais, passes through the town from end to end in a single narrow street; there you may see the fountain where women fill their pitchers; there also some old houses with carved doors and pediment and ornamental work in iron. For Monastier, like Maybole in Ayrshire, was a sort of country capital, where the local aristocracy had their town mansions for the winter; and there is a certain baron still alive and, I am told, extremely penitent, who found means to ruin himself by high living ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the east end has been covered by placing the great buttresses so as to make the pediment appear irregular, and the cross at the apex seems, consequently, not to be in the centre of the choir; while, in fact, it is the great east window (with the gable window over it) that is out ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... the place of Power, the god of the earth. There was a car of bronze on the top of the Pantheon, on which were placed the statues of Augustus and of Agrippa. On each side of the portico these same statues were placed in another form, and on the pediment of the Temple is still to be read: 'Consecrated by Agrippa.' Augustus gave his name to the age in which he lived because he made that age an epoch of the human mind. The masterpieces of every kind produced by his contemporaries form the rays of glory that encircle his head. He ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... half-wrecked Parthenon had been deprived of its remaining metopes, which had suffered far less from the weather than the other sides which are still in the building; all that remained of the frieze had been stripped from the three sides of the cella, and the eastern pediment had been despoiled of its diminished and mutilated, but still splendid, group of figures; and, though five or six years had gone by, the blank spaces between the triglyphs must have revealed their recent exposure to the light, and the shattered edges of the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... subserves utility. We build for use. But the geometrical proportions which the architect observes, contain the element of beauty and powerfully influence the soul. Into the language of arch and aisle and colonnade, of cupola and facade and pediment, of spire and vault, the architect translates emotion, vague perhaps but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a building is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean that sublimity or grace, frivolity or sternness, is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... nobly. If you build in marble you must either carve it into joyous decoration, like the lives of dancing children that adorn the marble castles of the Loire, or fill it with beautiful sculpture, frieze and pediment, as the Greeks did, or inlay it with other coloured marbles as they did in Venice. Otherwise you had better build in simple red brick as your Puritan fathers, with no pretence and with some beauty. Do not treat ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... extraordinary refinements demonstrated in a lecture by Mr. Penrose on the spot last year, at which I had the good fortune to be present, forbid such a conclusion. A few graduated inches in the circumference of the columns, and deflection from straight line in the pediment and in the base-line, proved by measurement and examination to be carefully intentional, will not permit us for a moment to believe this could have been the case; so precise in line, rhythmical in arrangement, lovely ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... to this day that the great surgeon died an atheist. Will not those who believe like to fancy that the humble Auvergnat came to open the gate of Heaven to his friend, as he did that of the earthly temple on whose pediment we read the words—"A grateful country ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... with a calm and benign aspect, as if seeking refuge from his misfortunes in the consolations of the gospel, which appears open on a table before him, whilst his lyre and one of his best compositions lie neglected on the ground. Upon the pediment of the table are placed two female ideal figures in relief, representing love and pity, entwined each in the arms of the other; the proper emblems of the genius of his poetry." It bears the following epitaph ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... design for a palace or house with a loggia in the middle of the first story, over which rises an attic with a Pediment reproduced on page 67. The details drawn close by on the left seem to indicate an arrangement of coupled columns against the wall of a first ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... story is in the Chinese or Venetian style, the first floor in that of the florid Gothic, with tiles and a pediment a-la-Nash, at the Bank; a doorway with inclined jambs, and a hieroglyphic a-la-Greek: a ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to keep in English, on the two meanings of (the Greek) word which signifies both an eagle and the gable of a house or pediment of a temple. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... great stones are found) is distinctly visible from the houses. I sat there upon my horse and remarked how unassailable by cavalry and elephants this site must have been, and how great its value for a military outwork to the sanctuary of the temple. The pediment and moulding of a column lay at my feet,—around and opposite across the valley were numerous sepulchres hewn in the solid rock; yet the infantry of the Syrians were sufficient to overwhelm the gallant defenders. Judas in this emergency resolved to come to their relief, raising the siege ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... excavation, under the direction of Dr. Orsi. The modern name of the spot is Gerace. A temple of six columns has been unearthed, and among the prizes is a Greek group in Parian marble, showing a divinity with a fishtail, a horse and a nude youth. The group is supposed to have been placed in the pediment of the west gable. Other finds are ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... Verdier is almost unchanged since the great exile lived in it two centuries ago. There are three windows on the ground floor and a basement. Between the two windows of the first floor is a medallion held by two figures. On each side of the circular pediment is a little "Mansard" window in the roof, and on the pediment itself are two statues. The windows are all decorated with carved flowers and wreaths, and the cornice beneath the eaves is prettily ornamented. This is the main facade looking out ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... serving for the satisfaction of the personal ambition, vanity, and self-interest of its members. The institution of Parliament is indeed one of the greatest illustrations of human delusion. . . . On the pediment of this edifice is inscribed, "All for the public good." This is no more than a lying formula: Parliamentarism is the triumph of egoism—its highest expression. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... woman understood. In such fear of life had she once dallied, one night long before, at the edge of woods, looking across the clearing at the belvedere, and the light in the room behind its pediment, which sent a fan of coarse brightness out through the skylight into the pale clotted starshine. With one arm she clasped a sapling as if it were a lover, and she murmured, "He is there, he is waiting for me. But I will not go. Another ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... pillars, the pediment, the Temple of Victory and the Erechtheum, set on a tawny rock cleft with shadows, directly you unlatch your shutters in the morning and, leaning out, hear the clatter, the clamour, the whip cracking in the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... vestibule and entrances at the front and at the rear stood six more columns. The beauty of the marble from which stones and columns were cut might have seemed enough, but the builders carved groups of figures in the three-cornered space (called the pediment) in front between the roof and the stones resting upon the columns. The upper rows of stones beneath the roof and above the columns were also carved, and continuous carvings (called a frieze) ran around the top of ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... cabinet consisted of a series of drawers, rising one above the other, and terminated by a triangular pediment, its tympanum ornamented with some beautiful little bronzes. The drawers themselves were concealed by two doors, opening in the centre, and covered with a most intricate design ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the oldest city in the world, the date of its foundation going beyond tradition, there are very few relics of antiquity in or near it. In the bazaar are three large pillars, supporting half the pediment, which are said to have belonged to the Christian Church of St. John, but, if so, that church must have been originally a Roman temple. Part of the Roman walls and one of the city gates remain; and we saw the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... former ages, I must mention the temple of Segeste, which stands on a gentle slope among the hills of northern Sicily. I had heard talk of the graceful proportions of this Doric temple, built by the Greek colonists; and great was my surprise, on first coming in sight of it, to see a pediment supported by two rows of short squat columns, without bases, and rising directly from the ground. A nearer inspection showed the cause of this extraordinary distortion. The whole slope had risen full six feet during the 2500 years, or so, that have elapsed since its desertion; and the ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... poet used the name once before; but he then applied it to pieces generally small in the scale of their delineations, whereas these, even if broken away one from the other, are yet like the disjoined figures from the pediment of the Parthenon in their dignity and force. One indeed among Mr. Tennyson's merits is, that he does not think it necessary to keep himself aloft by artificial effort, but undulates with his matter, and flies high or ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... We have said it is faced with this stone, that is externally, for the internal face of the building is of brick plastered for the reception of paintings. The church is of an irregular form, being composed of a square block, behind which is a large polygonal annexe; the whole is raised upon a pediment seven feet in height, and the portal, which is Moorish, is approached by twelve marble steps, said to symbolise the twelve tribes of Israel. From the square main portion of the church a large dome rises in the centre, and two smaller cupolas in front, whilst a secondary dome which is ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... and the two columns nearest to them, are formed out of the solid rock, like all the rest of the monument, but the two centre columns, one of which has fallen, were constructed separately, and were composed of three pieces each. The colonnade is crowned with a pediment, above which are other ornaments, which, if I distinguished them correctly, consisted of an insulated cylinder crowned with a vase, standing between two other structures in the shape of small temples, supported by short pillars. The entire front, from the base of the columns ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... thoughts. Every day it was her first idea, the theme of her first prayer. Throughout the day, she was kneeling there as in a dream; and while she was about her work it was constantly before her eyes, with its oaken frame with fillets of gold, its pediment in the shape of a winged angel's head, its green curtain with the motionless folds, and the mysterious darkness on both sides. It seemed to her that now her whole life centred there, and that every hour tended thither. She lived through the week looking forward to that longed-for, prayed-for, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... me now see vat this matter mean. Nobel prince, dis ting be done by mashic clean. 'Tis true dat me tell, me perceive it plain: No natural 'pediment, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... latter is dedicated to St. Catherine, and a figure of the saint adorns a niche in the left buttress. Both portals possess scrolls bearing inscriptions or mottoes, such as, A ma Vie, one of the mottoes of the House of Brittany. In the pediment of the west doorway is the finest heraldic sculpturing that the Middle Ages of Brittany produced. In the centre, the lion of Montfort holds the banner of Brittany, on which may be read the motto of Duke John V.: Malo au riche duc. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... hundreds of ancient stone coffins, along the road-side. The ground is thence called Les Champs Elysees. In a vault in a church, are some curiously wrought, and in a back yard are many ancient statues, inscriptions, &c. Within the town are a part of two Corinthian columns, and of the pediment with which they were crowned, very rich, having belonged to the ancient capitol ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a number of years ago—I forget the exact date, but it was a considerable time before the War—I spent a few weeks in Venice in lodgings that looked out on an old Venetian garden. At the end of the garden there was a rustic temple, and on its pediment stood some naked, decayed, gesticulating statues—heathen gods and goddesses I vaguely thought them—and above, among the yellowing trees, I could see the belfry of a small convent—a convent of Nuns vowed to contemplation, who were immured there for life, and never went ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... waving her arms, speaking too exuberantly, the antithesis of moderation and restraint. She was an aggregate of cylinders, big and small. Her shapeless legs were columns with large flatheeled shoes for their bases, supporting the inverted pediment of great hips. Her too short, greasespotted skirt was a mighty barrel and on it was placed the tremendous drum of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... pediment above the portico, a large bronze anchor was supported, and beneath it was cut, in projecting letters: ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... each triglyph and each metope. Three rows of six guttae each are attached to the under surface of a mutule. Above the cornice, at the east and west ends of the building, come the triangular PEDIMENTS or gables, formed by the sloping roof and adapted for groups of sculpture. The pediment is protected above by a "raking" cornice, which has not the same form as the horizontal cornice, the principal difference being that the under surface of the raking cornice is concave and without mutules. Above the raking cornice comes a SIMA or gutter-facing, which in buildings of good period ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... are next in London, look carefully in the British Museum at the casts from the statues in the pediment of the Temple of Minerva at AEgina. You have there Greek work of definite date—about 600 B. C., certainly before 580—of the purest kind; and you have the representation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the AEacidae at Troy, with Athena herself ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... my edifice achieved, my pediment sculptured, my scaffolding cleared away, my final touches given, it will be proved that I was either right or wrong. But after having been a poet, after having demonstrated an entire social system, I shall revert to science in an Essay on the Human Powers. And around the base of my palatial ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the gabled pediment of the porch showing through boughs of oaks, and a flight of bats wheeling over the ivied roof, the house appeared to Gay beyond a slight swell in the meadows. The grove of oaks, changing from dark red to russet, was divided by a short walk, bordered by clipped box, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... striking object on entering is a lofty and vast fireplace built on the antique model, of red brick, with two stone benches opposite one another beneath the chimney, and the singer's coat of arms—an enormous lyre barred with a roll of music—carved on the monumental pediment. The effect is startling; but a frightful draught comes from it, which joined to the coldness of the tile floor and the dull light admitted by the little windows on a level with the ground, may well terrify one for the health of the children. But what was do be done? ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... many remarks on the agriculture of several Irish counties, and showed himself to be an excellent farmer, particularly in draining. Viewed the Duke of Leinster's house, which is a very large stone edifice, the front simple but elegant, the pediment light; there are several good rooms; but a circumstance unrivalled is the court, which is spacious and magnificent, the opening behind the house is also beautiful. In the evening to the Rotunda, a circular room, ninety feet diameter, an imitation of Ranelagh, provided ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... no idea of the magnificent lime alley, which is concealed behind it. The house has a long front, abundantly furnished with windows, and has two deep and projecting wings. In the centre is a plain angular pediment, bearing the late Lord Ossory's arms, and over the door is a small circular one, pierced for an antique bust, and supported by two three-quarter Ionic pillars. In this house is a small collection of paintings, &c., ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... differed on divers points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Moliere had not been able to do, had The Two Philiberts played at the Odeon, upon whose pediment the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS to be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal, Pelicier, published an edition of Voltaire, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... admitted. Passing through the building, they will enter a spacious colonnade, which extends along the front of the body of the palace, and in front of each wing; above the colonnade is a magnificent balcony, supported by columns of the Doric order. At the end of each wing is a pediment, supported by Corinthian columns. The entablature of each pediment is tastefully filled up with groups of figures in white marble, exquisitely carved in alto relievo, illustrative of the arts and sciences. On the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... the abbey of St. Peter, in the heart of the city, and in the roomy cellars which underlie the old Htel des Fermes in the Place Royale, where in the days of the ancien rgime the farmers-general of the province used to receive its revenues. On the pediment of this edifice is a bas-relief with Mercury, the god of commerce, seated beside a nymph and surrounded by children engaged with the vintage and with bales of wool, and evidently intended to symbolise the staple trades of the capital of the Champagne. ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... also carried across horizontally in a manner which can be best understood by inspecting a diagram of the corner of a Greek Doric building (Fig. 57); and the triangular space thus formed was termed a pediment, and was the position in which the finest of the sculpture with which the building was enriched ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... rooms of a friend near this, which command an excellent view of it. I never saw so beautiful an effect of artificial light. The evening was perfectly serene and clear; the principal lines of the building, the columns, architrave and pediment of the front, the two inferior cupolas, the curves of the dome from which the dome rises, the ribs of the dome itself, the small oriel windows between them, and the lantern and ball and cross,—all were ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Kathleen's hand, put his foot on the pediment, his knee on the pedestal. He stood up, dark and human, beside the white ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... be a temple in antis when it has antae carried out in front of the walls which enclose the cella, and in the middle, between the antae, two columns, and over them the pediment constructed in the symmetrical proportions to be described later in this work. An example will be found at the Three Fortunes, in that one of the three which is nearest ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... of the women sculptors who have been selected to share in the decoration of the buildings for the St. Louis Exposition. She is to make two reclining figures on the pediment over the main entrance to the Liberal Arts Building. She has in her studio two reclining figures which will probably serve to ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... occupied by the Cathedral, while the other three sides were given up to the Government and Municipal Buildings. It was to one of these last, a large and imposing building with the arms of Spain boldly sculptured upon its pediment, that the alcalde conducted the little party of Englishmen, and which he entered alone, after apologising elaborately for doing so, upon the plea that it would greatly facilitate matters if he were permitted to first see Don Manuel Rebiera, the ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... structure could possibly be shown. Great alterations were made during the 15th and 17th centuries, and again about 1759, and in 1820; the last of all being those of our own days. During the course of the "restoration," now completed, an oval tablet was taken down from the pediment over the south porch, bearing the inscription of "John Hall and John Hopkins, churchwardens, 1759," whose economising notions had led them to cut the said tablet out of an old gravestone, the side built into ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... trees spread over the blueish basins and large balls of cabbages, and the old house, built in the monumental style of the seventeenth century, extended, solemn and immense, with eighteen windows in a row, and a pediment, in the span of which ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... could be heard snoring. Filling all of the outer wall between the peephole, leaded windows and running-up to the slope of the ceiling, was a great fireplace of native white freestone, carved into fluted columns, foliated capitals, and a flat pediment of purest classic lines. The ballroom of a noble of Queen Mary's day had been cut up into numerous small sleeping closets, many of them windowless, and were let to the chance lodger at threepence the night. Here, where generations ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... a plastic and ductile material, like the modeller's clay; literature alone is condemned to work in mosaic with finite and quite rigid words. You have seen those blocks, dear to the nursery: this one a pillar, that a pediment, a third a window or a vase. It is with blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure that the literary architect is condemned to design the palace of his art. Nor is this all; for since these blocks or words are the acknowledged currency of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Fabricatam Anno 1698. Richardo Powell Armiger Thesaurar." The words, set in four panels, which formed a frieze beneath the pediment of a fine brick portico, summarised the history of one of the tall houses at the upper end of King's Bench Walk and as I, somewhat absently, read over the inscription, my attention was divided between admiration of the exquisitely finished carved brickwork ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... which greeted his entrance, he remained for some instants, his right hand in the breast of his buttoned coat, erect and motionless on the tribune, the pediment of which bore these dates: February 22, 23, 24; and above which were inscribed these three words: ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... King's Arms at large, with ornaments thereto, designed for the pediment of the said front, the same being in the whole 15 foot long and 9 foot high, I finding timber, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... and back of the chamber have only what are known as "engaged" columns, as it were half-embedded in the wall. The roof is gabled and tiled, with ornaments along the eaves. The front has an embellished entablature, with its triangle of masonry called the "pediment," consisting of a cornice overhanging a sunken surface decorated with a sculptured group. Over each angle, right, left, and summit, is a base of stone supporting some conspicuous ornament, such as a statue, an eagle, or a figure ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... of the Lange Brucke (the Long Bridge) stands the bronze figure of the last Elector and Duke of Brandenburg, Frederick William, the grandfather of Frederick the Great. It is a well-executed equestrian statue, but to my mind the four figures clustered round the pediment, on whose hands still hang the broken chains of slavery, are better works of art, as well as admirable emblems of the energetic materials—the oppressed but spirited inhabitants of a few small states—of which the now powerful kingdom ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... vestries. The west front, in our Engraving, is occupied by an hexastyle portico of the Ionic order, with fluted columns. The floor is approached by a bold flight of steps, and in the wall, at the back are three entrances to the church. The columns are surmounted by their entablature and a pediment, behind which a low attic rises from the roof of the church to the height of the apex of the pediment; it is crowned with a cornice and blocking-course, and surmounted by an acroterium of nearly its own height, but in breadth only equalling two-thirds of it; this is finished with a sub-cornice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... think you mean,' quoth Raikes, serenely; but a curious glance being directed on him, and pursuing him pertinaciously, it was as if the pediment of the lofty monument he topped were smitten with violence. He stammered an excuse, and retreated somewhat as it is the fashion to do from the presence of royalty, followed by Harry's roar of laughter, in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Portland stone, which London smoke alternately blackens and calcines; and each facade has four Corinthian pilasters, an entablature, and an arched pediment. On the west (Strand) side, in two niches, stand, as eternal sentries, Charles I. and Charles II., in Roman costume. Charles I. has long ago lost his baton, as he once deliberately lost his head. Over the keystone of the central arch ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of tradition behind it! Wherever they may have got it from, the artistic instinct of the old Cape Dutch is undeniable, for a hundred years after Van der Stel's time they imported the French architect Thibault and the Dutch sculptor Anton Anreith. To Anreith is due the splendid sculptured pediment over the Constantia wine-house illustrating the story of Ganymede, and all Thibault's buildings have great distinction; but still, being where they are, they are a perpetual surprise, for in a new country one does not expect such a ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... hills at sunset began to spread gray over the heavens in a continuous curtain; but there was light enough left to show me that the trap became more columnar as we neared our journey's end. One especial jutting in the rock presented in the gloom the appearance of an ancient portico, with pediment and cornice, such as the traveller sees on the hill-sides of Petraea in front of some old tomb; but it may possibly appear less architectural by day. At length, passing from under the long line of rampart, just as the stars that had begun to twinkle over ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... though the columns and architraves to the jambs remained, showing some very delicate and beautiful work, which was also remarkably fine in the dado mouldings. The ceiling of the church—the wreck of the Tudor open-worked timber roof—had been "pared down to a common pediment covering," supported on the heads of cherubim as corbels. The Doric altar-piece is contemptuously referred to as "a painted theatrical ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... This refers to the introduction into architecture by the Corinthians of the pediment, within or above which were at that time constantly placed ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... instance, you know that, for an immense time back, all your public buildings have been built with a row of pillars supporting a triangular thing called a pediment. You see this form every day in your banks and clubhouses, and churches and chapels; you are told that it is the perfection of architectural beauty; and yet suppose Sir Walter Scott, instead of writing, "Each purple ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... close by, his bronze monument, with that of his brother, being that between the sacristy and the adjoining chapel, in an imposing porphyry and bronze casket, the work of Verrocchio, one of the richest and most impressive of all the memorial sculptures of the Renaissance. The marble pediment is supported by four tortoises, such as support the monoliths in the Piazza S. Maria Novella. The iron rope work that divides the sacristy from the chapel ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... with all windows on one side of the mansion, and had caused to be inserted, in their place, only a small aperture which, doubtless, was intended to light an otherwise dark lumber-room. Likewise, the architect's best efforts had failed to cause the pediment to stand in the centre of the building, since the proprietor had had one of its four original columns removed. Evidently durability had been considered throughout, for the courtyard was enclosed by a strong and very high wooden fence, and both the stables, the coach-house, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of unseemly things, is supplemented by other public demonstrations of the passion of the hour. For some years after the fall of the Commune the national emotions found solace in stencilling in big letters on every possible wall or fronton or pediment, public or private,—Liberte. Egalite. Fraternite. The harassed citizen of the new republic looked up, or down, or sideways, at this official assurance of the sentiments breathed by all, high or low, and found comfort. Only, the wits of the agitated capital—who ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... wood, with a cartouche in each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor stood in the corners, half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries hung on the walls, and a vast fireplace, flanked by huge Atlantes and crowned by a heavy pediment broken and curled, almost filled one whole side. "That fireplace is ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... lounged across the room and stood staring up at a bronze Bacchus who drooped his garlanded head above the pediment of an Italian cabinet. "What ought I to do? You're just the fellow to advise me." He felt the blood in his cheek as ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... basement; and a Corinthian drawing-room and chamber story; surmounted with an elegant entablature and balustrade. In the details, the spectator cannot fail to admire the boldness and richness of the columns supporting the pediment in the centre, and the classic beauty of the pilasters which decorate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... shortly after killed in battle defending himself against his brother Constance, who usurped the throne and finished the Forum. All that remains of this formerly splendid edifice are the two Corinthian columns, with part of the pediment encrusted into the wall of the Htel du Nord. It occupied the site of the Place du Forum, called also the Place des Hommes, because labourers and men-servants used to ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... centre. The extreme height is therefore fifty-eight feet. The front of the building is especially imposing. It has a projection in the centre, twenty-five feet wide and six feet deep, which extends the whole height of the structure and terminates in a gable, which is surrounded by a decorated pediment. The main entrance is approached by massive steps of granite, twelve feet wide, flanked by heavy buttresses. At the top of the steps is the entrance porch, eleven feet wide, six feet deep, and arched overhead. Polished granite columns with carved ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... down the street she stopped at a weak-hinged gate. Passing through it, she walked down a brick path to a queer little brick temple with white wooden columns supporting a pediment on which was inscribed in tarnished gold letters: "The ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... of honor, to which one comes along an alley decorated uniformly with upright square shafts like classic termae in stone and bronze. The impression of the antique lines is striking: it springs at once to the eyes, at first in this portico with columns and a heavy entablature, but lacking a pediment. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... king Midas (son not of Gordius but of Atys), has for facade a cliff about a hundred feet high, cut back to a smooth face on which an elaborate geometric pattern has been left in relief. At the foot is a false door, while above the immense stone curtain the rock has been carved into a triangular pediment worthy of a Greek temple and engraved with a long inscription in a variety of the earliest Greek alphabet. There are many other rock-tombs of smaller size but similar plan and decoration in the district round the central site, and others which show reliefs of human ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... take down the sculptures of Phidias from the eastern pediment, but his workmen attempted it so clumsily that the figures fell from their place and were dashed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... in the following order which I took note of on the spot: first, a temple with four columns of yellow flowers (the flower of the broom) containing an altar on which was the Holy Sacrament. In the pediment of the temple a column surmounted by a halfmoon, which is the arms of the Colonna family. Second was a large crown. Third, the Holy Sacrament again with various rich ornaments. Fourth, stars and circles. Fifth, a splendid coat-of-arms as ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... such a commonplace proceeding did not suit my adventurous disposition. I fastened one end of a rope (it was a few yards cut from Kitty Collins's clothes-line) to the bedpost nearest the window, and cautiously climbed out on the wide pediment over the hall door. I had neglected to knot the rope; the result was, that, the moment I swung clear of the pediment, I descended like a flash of lightning, and warmed both my hands smartly. The rope, moreover, was four or five feet too short; so I got a fall that would have proved serious ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
