cornicione
In Italian buildings of the Renaissance, and later styles, a wall cornice, so proportioned as to accommodate itself to the whole height of the wall and the whole mass of the building. The supposition is that each story has its own cornice, or at least that a number of string courses, each treated like a classical entablature and each having its own classical entablature and each having its own cornice, will have been built into the wall below; while the final or uppermost projecting member is proportioned, not to one story, but as to an imaginary order (of columns or pilasters) which would have had the whole height of the wall. (Sturgis, 1900)