Lunette
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A lunette is a crescent- or half-moon–shaped or semicircular architectural space or feature, variously filled with sculpture, painted, glazed, filled with recessed masonry, or void. A lunette may also
Lunette over the main door of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris
Charles Sprague Pearce, Rest (1896). Mural in a lunette in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Sistine Chapel ceiling
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The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted in fresco by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art.
Lunette
…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 to come up with inventive compositions for the spaces. In the Neoclassical architecture of Robert Adam and his French contemporaries…
The interior of the Sistine Chapel showing the ceiling in relation to the other frescoes. Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam is near the top of the photo.
The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it
Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)
Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling