FIG. 116.triforium of the nave of the Cathedral of Amiens. The round abacus hardly occurs in France, though it is found in Normandy, before the fourteenth century; it is, therefore, not a feature of the strictly Gothic style.
The profiles of abaci are of considerable variety, yet they are always comparatively simple. Starting from the idea of the simply bevelled stone of the eleventh century, as in St. Aignan of Senlis (Fig. 116), the mouldings of the early Gothic abacus are of slight projection, as in St. Evremont at Creil and the cathedral at Senlis (Fig. 117, a and b], and gradually become more salient, as in the triforium of the nave of Paris (c, d, e, and f, in the same figure). These mouldings are rarely, if ever, of uniform profile throughout an entire building, nor even throughout any considerable portion of a building. Though the same profile may be often repeated, yet there will usually be found several forms in the abaci of any extended arcade. Thus in the north triforium of the nave of Paris, where there are in all fourteen capitals, the four different profiles exhibited in Fig. 117 occur. Of these, counting from the transept, the profile c occurs in the first, second, third, fourth,
FIG. 117.
and eighth; the profile d in the fifth, sixth, ninth, and tenth; the profile e in the seventh; and the profile f in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth. Where the same form is repeated there is always more or less variety in the proportions of the parts—the mouldings having evidently been chiselled with the free hand rather than with rigid mechanical precision.
