FREGIO. – The central zone of the entablature, between the architrave and the cornice, differing in architectural orders (v.). In early Christian buildings it follows the latest classical forms: with an inscription (the small temple of Clitunno); convex (the doorway of the Lateran Baptistery); with reliefs of vine tendrils (the doorway of S. Salvatore in Spoleto); with triglyphs (but above Corinthian columns, in the presbytery of the same church).
The use of decorating the f. with mosaics (S. Maria Maggiore) became more widespread in the Romanesque period, with floral motifs and, more often, Cosmatesque ornamentation. Gothic structural conception excludes the entablature and therefore the f. Its use returned with the architraved architecture of the Renaissance, sometimes plain, sometimes ornamented; in Tuscany with dipei (Brunellesco), with reliefs in glazed terracotta (the figurative one at the Ospedale del Ceppo in Pistoia is typical), and with classical motifs. These were then imaginatively transformed in Lombardy according to the local taste, to which Bramante himself also yielded (the sacristy of S. Satiro), whereas in his Roman works he adopted the plain frieze and the frieze with triglyphs. Greater respect for the classical canons is found in the sixteenth century: the triglyph, the dominant motif in the church of S. Biagio at Montepulciano (1518, A. Sangallo il Vecchio), was subsequently adopted on a wide scale, especially in central Italy. Classical-style festoons were used by Michelangelo (Palazzo Farnese, the dome of S. Pietro) and, with greater sumptuousness, by Sansovino in the Libreria Marciana, an almost isolated example in the Veneto, where the prevailing Palladian movement eliminated every decorative superimposition. The Baroque paid little attention to the decoration of the f. on the exterior of churches, but inside it adapted it in richness to the sumptuous colourism of the walls; here too, a note of originality was introduced by Borromini, in heraldic and floral motifs treated with renewed imagination (Propaganda Fide; S. Giovanni in Oleo). Neoclassicism returned with learned coldness to the ancient canons.