Online Encyclopedia

DENTIL (from Lat. dens, a tooth)

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V08, Page 50 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DENTIL (from
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Lat. dens, a tooth)
  , in architecture, a small tooth-shaped block used as a repeating ornament in the bed-
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mould of a cornice . Vitruvius (iv . 2) states that the dentil represents the end of a
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rafter (asser); and since it occurs in its most pronounced form in the Ionic temples of
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Asia Minor, the Lycian tombs and the porticoes and tombs of
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Persia, where it represents distinctly the
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reproduction in stone of
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timber construction, there is but little doubt as to its origin . The earliest example is that found on the tomb of Darius, c . 500 B.C., cut in the rock in which the portico of his palace is reproduced . Its first employment in Athens is in the cornice of the caryatid portico or tribune of the
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Erechtheum (48o B.C.) . When subsequently introduced into the bed-mould of the cornice of the choragic monument of Lysicrates it is much smaller in its dimensions . In the later temples of
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Ionia, as in the temple of Priene, the larger scale of the dentil is still retained . As a general
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rule the
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projection of the dentil is equal to its width, and the intervals between to
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half the width . In some cases the projecting
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band has never had the sinkings cut into it to
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divide up the dentils, as in the Pantheon at Rome, and it is then called a dentil-band . The dentil was the chief decorative feature employed in the bed-mould by the Romans and the
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Italian Revivalists . In the porch of the church of St John Studius at Constantinople, the dentil and the
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interval between are equal in width, and the interval is splayed back from top to bottom; this is the form it takes in what is known as the " Venetian dentil," which was copied from the
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Byzantine dentil in
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Santa Sophia, Constantinople .

There, however, it no longer formed

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part of a bed-mould: its use at Santa Sophia was to decorate the projecting moulding enclosing the encrusted
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marbles, and the dentils were cut alternately on both sides of the moulding . The Venetian dentil was also introduced as a label round arches and as a
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string course .

End of Article: DENTIL (from Lat. dens, a tooth)
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