Criteria and Tools to catalogue brick-masonry vaults. The GIS-Database of frame, a fasce and planterian vaults between the 16th and 18th century in Northern Italy

The paper describes a proposal for criteria and tools to catalogue brick-masonry vaulted systems in Northern Italy between the 16th and 18th centuries. Along with the standard geometric typologies, three novel parameters (maîtresses voûtes, voûte sur le plan d'une autre voûte, constructive features) are proposed to include the constructive features in the vault taxonomy. The novel parameters help catalogue three vaulting types that can be considered the metamorphosis of cloister vaults: frame, a fasce, and planterian vaults. The database was realized in MS Access and then imported into QGIS 3.10. Database and GIS have been operative tools to form hypotheses on vault disseminations, highlighting the recurrences and specificities across time and space of some peculiar construction techniques. The database collects the acquired information on each vault (building type, geolocation, building date, vaulting type, vault dimensions and description and, whenever possible, photogrammetric survey, 3D modelling, and thermographic survey). In the future, the database should be published online, making the data available and building a broader dataset to share the information.