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13:12 Aug 24, 2011
French to English translations [PRO] Architecture / ecclesiatical architecture
French term or phrase:abside voûtée sur croisée d'ogives
I work in a tourist office in Languedoc and have to translate descriptions of local churches - can't find the english translations
The question of whether or not the ribs "support" the webbing as heavily debated among French architectural historians (Viollet-le-Duc to Lefevre-Pontalis to Marcel Aubert) from the later 19th well into the 20th cc. --it was one of those (many) issues which I failed to get on top of as a young graduate student. Survival of ribs alone in some ruins (e.g., Ourscamp, http://tinyurl.com/3frdadz) would seem to suggest that they do, indeed, support the webbing, and thus may have served an analogous function to that of the "centering," the wooden form work which is necessary to lay the arches (including rib arches). So, yeah, I suppose that you *could* say that the webbing rests "sur" the ribs but, in point of fact, we know from documentary evidence (and from common sense, if you think about it) that the stones of the webbing actually had to be laid on (vault-shaped) mounds of dirt which lay on scaffolding platforms beneath the vault. This "sur" notion is not one which I can remember seeing before (perhaps because I'm having one of those Senior Moments) --though my reading has been largely restricted to the professional (Art History) literature, and Hilary's author is not one of those.
While the vault (flat parts or web) and the ribs (parts projecting downwards) form a whole, it might appear that the ribs are a structure supporting the vaulting above, no?
The Doct. of Arch. and Const. does, after all, say of "ribbed vault":
"A vault in which THE RIBS SUPPORT, OR SEEM TO SUPPORT, the web of the vault."
Explanation: I'm a bit confused by the use of "sur" here.
Surely "abside voûtée" means that the apse is "vaulted," i.e., it has a *stone* vault (rather than either a ceiling of wood suspended from the transverse beams or simply the exposed beams).
And "croisée d'ogives" tell us what kind of vault it is: a "rib vault" (i.e., it is in the "gothic" style rather than having a simple, smooth "Romanesque" half dome).
Many of the churches in your region, Hilary, were never "vaulted" (i.e., their ceilings are not in stone), and I'm thinking that "voûtée" here simply means "abside voûtée en pierre."
But the "sur" still has me stumped.
Is your text written by a French author?
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 1 hr (2011-08-24 15:04:54 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Thanks, Hilary.
Well, does "sur" make any sense to him, in this context?
I just don't know whether I've ever seen "sur" in the sense of "avec."
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 23 hrs (2011-08-25 13:04:25 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
"The apse, a masterpiece of the mature Gothic 'Rayonnant' style is remarkable for its seven-part vault." (no reason to say "rib vault," since that is clear from the "Gothic" classification.)
Since there is no English word for "Rayonnant" (literally, the "radiant style," but that term is rarely used), I have semi-defined it as "mature Gothic" and put the R. in quotes.
It is the name (i.e., the "construct") architectural historians have given to the next (and "mature") phase of Gothic, after the "High Gothic" style of Chartres and Soissons, etc., and emerges in the late 1230 or so and lasts for a few decades.
The Sainte Chapelle in Paris is an atypical (in its plan only) Rayonnant building, though its rose window
seems to me to be getting on towards the "Flamboyant" --note its "flame-like" tracery.
The great American art historian, Robert Branner, associated many of the Rayonnant buildings with the patronage of Louis IX (St. Louis), and invented the term "Court Style," which is used more or less synonymously with Rayonnant.
Sure enough, it's a septipartite one --though I've never seen that term used (maybe I made it up from the more common "tripartite" and "quadripartite").
I *believe* that seven-part vaults are something of a rarity, probably because of the difficulty of laying out a seven part ground plan (the vault reflects the ground play, as you can see) --the geometry of even numbers is much more easily worked out.
I know nothing about the history of Capestand --but I do know that every building has its own unique history, which is why we need to exercise some care when applying 19th and 20th c. terminology to these medieval buildings, lest we be "tyrannized by our own constructs."
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 23 hrs (2011-08-25 13:08:10 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Corrections (I hate it when that happens):
"reflects the ground plan" --in the penultimate paragraph.
and "Capestang" in the ultimate one.
Christopher Crockett Local time: 12:03 Specializes in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 71
Notes to answerer
Asker: Thank you so very much - in fact this was written by a french person (I suspect not a specialist!) who conducts guided tours for the tourist office in Capestang - it's a collegiate church built in XIII and XIV centuries by the same team who built the cathedral in Narbonne. The translation was just so he could explain a bit about the church to English speaking visitors.
Asker: Have found another document describing the Capestang 'abside' which says this : "L'abside, chef d'oeuvre du gothique rayonnant, est remarquable par sa voûte à sept pans". You are right in that 'sur' was definitely not the right word. Thanks again Christopher for your help.
The translation workplace 
