Porte entrée principale Palais Luxembourg Paris 2

A lunette (French ''lunette'', "little moon") is a half-moon shaped

architectural Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings o ...

space, variously filled with sculpture, painted, glazed, filled with recessed masonry, or void. A lunette may also be segmental, and the arch may be an arc taken from an oval. A lunette window is commonly called a ''half-moon window'', or

fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window, often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, and is sometimes hinged to a transom. ...

when bars separating its panes fan out radially. If a door is set within a round-headed arch, the space within the arch above the door, masonry or glass, is a lunette. If the door is a major access, and the lunette above is massive and deeply set, it may be called a tympanum. A lunette is also formed when a horizontal cornice transects a round-headed

arch An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vau ...

at the level of the imposts, where the arch springs. If the top of the lunette itself is bordered by a hood mould it can also be considered a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

. The term is also employed to describe the section of interior wall between the curves of a vault and its springing line. A system of intersecting vaults produces lunettes on the wall surfaces above a cornice. The lunettes in the structure of the Sistine Chapel ceiling inspired

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was ins ...

to come up with inventive compositions for the spaces. In the

Neoclassical architecture Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing sty ...

of Robert Adam and his French contemporaries like Ange-Jacques Gabriel, a favorite scheme set a series of windows within shallow blind arches. The lunettes above lent themselves to radiating motifs: a

sunburst A sunburst is a design or figure commonly used in architectural ornaments and design patterns and possibly pattern books. It consists of rays or "beams" radiating out from a central disk in the manner of sunbeams. Sometimes part of a sunburs ...

of bellflower husks, radiating fluting, a low vase of flowers, etc. VillaPetraia

Flemish painter Giusto Utens rendered a series of Medicean villas in lunette form for the third grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I, in 1599–1602:

References

External links

{{Commonscat, Lunettes
Lunette on ''Encyclopaedia Britannica''
Arches and vaults Doors

See also

References

External links