Alunette (Frenchlunette, 'little moon') is a crescent- or half-moon–shaped or semi-circulararchitectural space or feature, variously filled with sculpture, painted, glazed, filled with recessed masonry, or void. A lunette may also be segmental, and the arch may be an arc taken from an oval. A lunette window is commonly called ahalf-moon window, orfanlight when bars separating its panes fan out radially.
If a door is set within a round-headed arch, the space within the arch above the door, masonry or glass is a lunette. If the door is a major access, and the lunette above is massive and deeply set, it may be called atympanum.
A lunette is also formed when a horizontalcornice transects a round-headedarch at the level of theimposts, where the arch springs. If the top of the lunette itself is bordered by ahood mould it can also be considered apediment.
The term is also employed to describe the section of interior wall between the curves of a vault and itsspringing line. A system of intersecting vaults produces lunettes on the wall surfaces above a cornice. The lunettes in the structure of theSistine Chapel ceiling inspiredMichelangelo to come up with inventive compositions for the spaces.
In theNeoclassical architecture ofRobert Adam and his French contemporaries such asAnge-Jacques Gabriel, a favorite scheme set a series of windows within shallow blind arches. The lunettes above lent themselves to radiating motifs: asunburst of bellflower husks, radiating fluting, a low vase of flowers, etc.
TheFlemish painterGiusto Utens rendered a series of Medicean villas in lunette form for the third grand duke of Tuscany,Ferdinando I, in 1599–1602.[1]
Media related toLunettes at Wikimedia Commons