Cavetto

A cavetto is a concave moulding with a regular curved profile that is part of a circle, widely used in architecture as well as furniture, picture frames, metalwork and other decorative arts.

In describing vessels and similar shapes in pottery, metalwork and related fields, "cavetto" may be used of a variety of concave curves running round objects.

[6] The cavetto cornice, often forming less than a quarter-circle, influenced Egypt's neighbours and as well as appearing in early Greek architecture, it is seen in Syria and ancient Iran, for example at the Tachara palace of Darius I at Persepolis, completed in 486 BC.

In general the Greeks made much more use of the cyma moulding, where a cavetto and ovolo were placed one above the other to produce a "S" shape; the cymatium using this was a standard part of the cornice in the classical Ionic order, and often used elsewhere.

A cavetto alone was sometimes employed in the place of the cymatium of a cornice, as in the Doric order of the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome,[8] one of the standard models for revived classical architecture from the Renaissance onwards.

[11] But small cavetto mouldings were normal at various places, including integrated ones, not distinguished as a distinct zone by lines or borders, at the bottom of the shaft of columns, beginning the transition to the wider base.