In architecture, a lunette (diminutive of French lune, "moon") is a half-moon shaped space, either masonry or void. A lunette is formed when a horizontal cornice transects a round-headed arch at the level of the imposts, where the arch springs. 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 a tympanum.
Oval lunette over door
The term is usefully employed to describe the section of interior wall between the curves of a vault 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 inspired Michelangelo to come up with inventive compositions for the spaces.
In neoclassical architecture of Robert Adam and his French contemporaries, like Ange-Jacques Gabriel, a favorite scheme set a series of windows within shallow blind arches. The lunettes above lent themselves to radiating motifs: a sunburst of bellflower husks, radiating fluting, a low vase of flowers, etc.
A lunette may also be segmental, and the arch may be an arc taken from an oval. The spaces are still lunettes.
A lunette is commonly called a half-moon window, when the space is used as a window.
The lunette, known in Germany as the lunula and also as the melchisedech, is a crescent-shaped clip made of gold or of silver-gilt which is used for holding the Host in an upright position when exposed in the monstrance.
The lunette was certainly in use before the Reformation and it is to be found in many of the monstrances of the fifteenth century which are still preserved to us (see the list in Otto-Wernicke, "Handbuch", I, 243).
Already in 1591 Jakob Müller in his "Kirchengeschmuck" gives a detailed description of the lunette, or "mönlein", and points out the desirability that the two strips of metal that form the clip should be separable so as to permit of their being thoroughly purified when the Host is changed.
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