Fitness: a principle of beauty; that the design of a work of art shall conform to the necessary requirements of its purpose, material and method of making.
Flamboyant (“flaming”): used to distinguish the third period of French Gothic (fifteenth century), from the encreased elaboration of the window traceries.
Fleche: specifically, a wooden spire surmounting a roof.
Fluting: the vertical grooving, used to enrich the shaft of a column or pilaster.
Flying Buttress: See Buttress.
Foil: a leaf-like division in carved ornamentation; especially in the tracery of a Gothic window or the panelling of walls and bench-ends. According to the number of foils included, the design is distinguished as trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil, etc.
Formeret: See Rib.
Fresco (lit. fresh or damp): see Secco and Tempera; terms used in Mural Painting (which see). After the wall had thoroughly dried out, a portion, such as the artist could cover in one day was spread with a thin layer of fine, quick-drying plaster. While the latter was still fresh or damp, the artist, having prepared his drawing or “cartoon,” laid it in place and went over the lines with a blunt instrument, which left the design grooved in the plaster. Then he applied the tempera colours, finishing as he proceeded, for the colour sank into the plaster and rapidly dried with it, so that subsequent touchings up or alterations could only be applied by painting in Secco. As long as the surface of the wall remains intact, the colours are imperishable and retain their vivacity and transparence. They have, too, the appearance of being part of the actual fabric of the wall, as the bloom of colour upon fruit. Thus Fresco is the fittest and most beautiful process of mural painted decoration.
Frieze: specifically, the middle division of an Entablature, between the Architrave and the Cornice (which see). Also the continuous band of painted or sculptured decoration that crowns an exterior or interior wall.
[G]able: the upper part of the wall of a building, above the eaves; triangular in shape, conforming to the slope of the roof. Compare the Classic Pediment. If the edge of the gable rises in tiers it is distinguished as Stepped.