Bulletin of Catholic University of Peking

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF PEKING . 35

fore any walls or partitions are inserted between the columns.

The pillars are distributed in rows across the long side and through the depth of the rectangle, so as to form a series of naves in the interior of the building. The interspaces of the columns of the outermost row are left open, forming a portico. The intervals between the columns of the next or first interior row are closed with wooden screens, which serve as doors and windows. These wooden screens are often elaborately carved, their upper portions, which serve to admit light, being an intricate net-work of delicate tracery. The whole impression is as though the facade were curtained with a veil of lace-like drapery.

The tie-beams are laid directly on top of the columns. Instead of a capital, the wooden pillar has a pair of brackets outstretched like arms or

wings. The chief function of the latter seems to be that of tempering the severity and stiffness of the long horizontal lines of the tie-beams and architraves. Above the architrave, too, attached to the beams of the entablature, are rows of far-protruding brackets or consoles, which support the overlying eave-beams. These, together with the ornate roof-ledge and its double row of underlying eave-rafters, constitute the highest plastic effect of the facade, playing in light and shadow and all sorts of capricious silhouettes. They are, as it were, the transition motive from the verticals of the rooftiles to the horizontals of the entablature. The roof is the culminating motive in Chinese architecture. The sweeping curve of its lines and surfaces conveys the impression of a woven canopy of heavy texture in which the vertical

Wu T’ai Shan

Hsien

Shansi