canopy
1. Roof-like ornamented hood surmounting an altar, doorway, font, niche, pulpit (where it is called a tester), stall, statue, tabernacle, throne, tomb, window-aperture, etc., supported on brackets, colonnettes, etc., or suspended.
2. Canopy of honour, ceele, ceilure, celure, cellure, or seele, is a richly coloured, often gilded, and panelled ceiling above an altar, chancel, chantry-chapel, mortuary-chapel, etc.
3. Town canopy is a structure resembling an arcaded gabled opening, often with elaborate pinnacles, finials, etc., like a model building, set on top of a niche or protecting a statue: the motif was adapted in funerary architecture, often shown in three dimensions, but horizontal (90° from the usual vertical position as a protection from the weather), on tomb-chests over the heads of effigies, and was later shown in incised slabs and funerary brasses. A canopy over an altar is usually called baldacchino or ciborium.
canopy
can·o·py / ˈkanəpē/ • n. (pl. -pies) an ornamental cloth covering hung or held up over something, esp. a throne or bed. ∎ fig. something hanging or perceived as hanging over a person or scene: the canopy of stars. ∎ Archit. a rooflike projection or shelter: they mounted the steps under the concrete canopy. ∎ the transparent plastic or glass cover of an aircraft's cockpit. ∎ the expanding, umbrellalike part of a parachute, made of silk or nylon. ∎ [in sing.] the uppermost trees or branches of the trees in a forest, forming a more or less continuous layer of foliage.• v. (-pies, -pied) [tr.] [usu. as adj.] (canopied) cover or provide with a canopy: a canopied bed | the river was canopied by overhanging trees. ORIGIN: late Middle English: from medieval Latin canopeum ‘ceremonial canopy,’ alteration of Latin conopeum ‘mosquito net over a bed,’ from Greek kōnōpeion ‘couch with mosquito curtains,’ from kōnōps ‘mosquito.’