Niche (architecture)

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Florentine Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi placed his Madonna of the 1440s within a simulated shell-headed niche
Florentine Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi placed his Madonna of the 1440s within a simulated shell-headed niche

The niche in classical architecture is an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. Nero's Domus Aurea (AD 64-69) was the first semi-private dwelling that possessed rooms that were given richly varied floor plans, shaped with niches and exedras; sheathed in dazzling polished white marble, such curved surfaces concentrated or dispersed the daylight.

In Gothic architecture a niche may be set within a tabernacle framing, like a richly-decorated miniature house ("aedicule"), such as might serve for a reliquary. Backings for altars in churches ("reredos") can be embedded with niches for statues. Though a niche in either Classical or Gothic context may be empty and merely provide some articulation and variety to a section of wall, the cult origins of the niche suggested that it be filled with a statue. In Fra Filippo Lippi's Madonna (illustration, right) the trompe-l'oeil niche frames her as with the canopy of estate that was positioned over a personage of importance in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe. At the same time, the Madonna is represented as an iconic sculpture who has "come alive" with miraculous immediacy.

Expanding from its primary sense as an architectural recess, a niche can be applied to a hollow, crack, crevice, or foothold.

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[edit] References

  • Sir John Summerson, 1948. in Heavenly Mansions. Discussion of the Gothic aedicule.