CHAPTER IX

Fig. 161.—Egyptian Scarabeus.

plenty, as it appeared just before the springing of the crops, and immediately after the subsidence of the Nile; it was therefore to the Egyptians the harbinger of their daily bread, so there need be little wonder that it was worshipped by them as the emblem of earthly goodness. There is a species of lotus that bears fruit, and it is said that the form of the Jewish seven-branched candlestick was derived from it. The lotus was used in the decoration of everything Egyptian, the fresh flowers were used in garnishing the offerings to their gods, and was also presented as a peace offering to strangers and visitors. Next

Fig. 162.—Inscription from an Egyptian tablet.

Fig. 163.—Japanese inscription, “Jiu,” or “long life.”

Fig. 164.—Winged-globe and asps, Egyptian Symbolic ornament.

Fig. 165.—Symbolic ornament, the Egyptian lotus and water.

in importance to the lotus came the palm as a symbolical plant; this was used by the Assyrians in their bas-reliefs. It was, when surrounded by the sacred hom, called the “tree of life” (Fig. 166). The date-palm is here surrounded by the sacred hom, which grew on the slopes of the Hindoo Kush, and was the plant from which inebriating drink was first

Fig. 166.—Sacred tree of life or hom (British Museum), from an Assyrian bas-relief.

made by the Aryans. The date-palm was certainly the tree of life to Eastern nations, affording them food, alcoholic drink,[8]and shelter. Many animals, birds, and hybrid creations, such as the Egyptian sphinx and the winged bull of Assyria, had symbolical meanings.

The fir-cone, so common in Assyrian ornament,was an emblem of fire, as the lotus was an emblem of water, and this cone placed on a staff, and adorned with ribbons, was carried by the Bacchanals and Mænads when celebrating the festivals of Dionysus, the Greek Bacchus. This is known as the “thyrsus,” or staff of Bacchus. (SeeFig. 167.) The pine-tree was sacred to Dionysus, from its supplying turpentine

Fig. 167.—Three forms of the thyrsus or staff of Bacchus.

to make torches; wine also was made from its cones, both important elements in these festivals. The head of the thyrsus was often made of ivy leaves instead of the pine-cone, and Bacchus is said to have concealed spears under this head of leaves, and thus overcome those who were inimical to him (DiodorusSic. lib. iii. cap. iv.; Ovid’sMetamor. iii. 667). The vine and the ivy were also sacred to Bacchus, and are symbolical of him in Greek and Roman decoration. Early Christian and mediæval art are also teeming with symbolic ornaments. These ornaments are often called indifferently “emblems,” “attributes,” “symbols,” &c. Allegory is a kind of parable, and the word is often applied to allegorical painting or sculpture, which is a representation of one thing under the image of another, and is mostly expressed by human or animal forms.[9]In a recent picture called “Hope,” by Mr. Watts, we have a fine allegorical illustration, in a figure seated on a sphere, or the world, bending her ear to catch the strains of a lyre which she plays, which has only one string left; there is a weird feeling of loneliness about the composition, just relieved from utter desolation by the music that is left in the one string.

THE arabesques of the Vatican have been noticed before; there were, however, arabesques on the ceiling of the Sala del Cambio at Perugia, painted by Perugino, Raphael’s master, also in the Borgia apartment at the Vatican, and in the Villa Madama; arabesques of the latter are said to have been copied from the plaster work in Hadrian’s villa near Tivoli.

Raphael, being one of the greatest modern painters, added to the beauty of this sort of decoration by the exquisite drawing and composition of the figures. Some of the medallions at the Loggias contain subjects said to be taken from antique gems, and Scripture subjects are also introduced; the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise is balanced by one of Omphale and Hercules, the queen having the club.

When a cipher or a sign conveys to our minds an idea, or an association of ideas, we call it a “symbol,” particularly if the idea is connected with religion. The commonest form met with in symbolic art is the circle, as the symbol of eternity, from its having neither beginning nor ending; it often appears as a serpent with its tail in its mouth, for this, like many other Pagan symbols, was adopted by theearly Christians. The circle in the shape of a wheel has perhaps had the widest signification in art. The wheel of fire, or sun-wheel, was an emblem of the Teutonic sun-worshippers. Thetchakra, or sacred wheel, is the emblem of the religion of Brahma; it is the shield of Brahma and Vishnu, as a wheel of fire; it is to the Siamese a type of universal dominion, a sign of disaster, and the symbol of eternity. (SeeFig. 168.) The wheel form atFig. 169is thekikumonor badge of the Empire of Japan; it is derived, however, from the chrysanthemum.

Fig. 168.—The “tchakra,”or sacred wheel of Brahmaand Vishnu, also calledthe “wheel of fire.”Fig. 169.—Kiku-Mon,badge of the empire of Japan.

Fig. 168.—The “tchakra,”or sacred wheel of Brahmaand Vishnu, also calledthe “wheel of fire.”

Fig. 169.—Kiku-Mon,badge of the empire of Japan.

Christian art, from the beginning of the first century of our era to the fourth, consisted almost entirely of symbols. The first Christians were fearful lest their new converts should relapse into Paganism, and so avoided images; and being persecuted they used only a few symbols such as the fish, the dove, the lamb, and the monogram of Christ. This last consisted of two Greek letters X and P (Chi and Rho), the Chi forming the cross as shown atAinFig. 170; another form of this is shown atB, in which a cross has the Rho formed on the upright stem, and has the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet (Alphaand Omega) written beneath the arms. This form sometimes appears on the nimbus over the head of a lamb; the latter sometimes stands on a round hill, at the bottom of which issue four streams, the whole symbol signifying “Christ the first and the last, the Lamb of God,” the streams “the four evangelists whose gospels are the water of life to the whole world.”

AtC, Fig 170, we have the monogram that the Emperor Constantine placed on thelabarum, or

Fig. 170.—Sacred Monograms in Christian Art.

Imperial standard, after his conversion; it was woven in gold on purple cloth. Christ was sometimes represented as Orpheus, with a lyre in his hand, amid the birds and beasts; the commonest personification of Him was, however, as the Good Shepherd caring for His sheep, in which He was always represented young and beautiful. Every allegorical representation of the Founder of the Christian religion was rendered pleasing to the eye of the new converts, and anything pertaining to the dreadful scene of the Crucifixion was avoided. The Christian Church was symbolized under the form of a ship, with our Lord as the pilot and the congregation as the passengers; whence wemay have the wordnave(of a church), fromnavis, a ship;naus, a ship, was also the Greek name for the inner part of a temple.

Fig. 171.—Counterchange ornament, Spanish embroidery.

The dove in Christian art is the emblem of fidelity and of the Holy Spirit, the pelican of the Atonement, and the phœnix of the Resurrection. One of the symbols of our Lord is a fish, because its Greek name Ἰχθύς (Ichthus) contains the initials of “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour.” It was also used as the symbol of a Christian passing through the world without being sullied by it, as the fish is sweet, in spite of its living in salt water; it is found engraved in the soft stone of the Roman catacombs (where the early Christians took refuge), with the monogram and other inscriptions. TheVesica piscis, or fish form, often encloses the Virgin and Child, and is thecommon form of the seals of religious houses, abbeys, colleges, &c. The four evangelists are represented respectively as a lion, a calf, a man, and an eagle,—St. Mark being the lion, the calf St. Luke, the man St. Matthew, and the eagle St. John.

Fig. 172.—Moresque Counterchange pattern, inlaid marble.

Many plants are used as symbols in Christian art: the vine, as typical of Christ, during Byzantine times and the Middle Ages. In Scripture we find frequent allusions to the vine and grapes; the wine-press is typical of the “Passion,” as we read in Isaiah. The passion-flower, as its name denotes, was, and is, used as an emblem of the death of Christ. The lily is the emblem of purity, and has alwaysbeen used as the attribute of the Virgin Mary in pictures of the Annunciation. We find this plant often engraved on the tombs of early Christian virgins. From the iris, formerly called a lily, is derived the flower de luce, orfleur-de-lis, one of the finest conventional renderings of any flower; it was much used as a decoration in sculpture, painting, and weaving during the thirteenth and following centuries. It was the royal insignia of France; mediæval Florence bore it on her shield and on her coin, thefiorino; and it was used in the crowns of many sovereigns, from King Solomon down to our own Queen. The trefoil is an emblem of the Trinity, and is a common form in Gothic decoration.

Figs.173 and 174.—Interchange ornament.

The symbolic and mnemonic classes have now beendescribed, and theæstheticalone remains. Æsthetic form we owe to the clearness and directness of the Greek mind. The Greeks were contented with the simple solution of the problem before them, which was to beautify what they had in hand. If they wanted allegorical subjects they confined them to their figure subjects, and being thus freed from other disturbing elements, they concentrated their whole attention on perfecting floral form. They attained perfection in this as they did in their figures, by correcting the peculiarities of the individual by a study of the best specimens of a whole class; and thus succeeded in making the most perfect type of radiating ornament, and of adapting it to sculpture and painting, on flat and curved surfaces. This ornament has perfect fitness, for you can neither add to it nor take away from it without spoiling its perfection. The same may be said, only in a minor degree, of the colour applied to the carved patterns of the Saracens and Moors: they are both æsthetic works, solely created for their beauty. A symphony in music is a composition of harmonious sounds; it has little subject-matter, and is analogous to æsthetic ornament, only the ear is charmed by the former, as the eye is by the latter.

IT seemed to me that a short chapter on the orders would be useful to students, not only because so much ornament is used as an enrichment to architecture itself, but also because a very much larger proportion of it is used in conjunction with architecture, and without some slight knowledge of the subject, the ornament and the architecture, instead of setting off each other’s characteristic beauties, are apt to spoil one another. The rigid lines of architecture should act as a foil to the graceful curves of ornament, and the plain faces should not only set off fretted surfaces, but make the undulations of carved ornament precious. When I speak of ornament, I include the highest form of it, the human figure, and I may point to the Doric frieze of the Greeks as a brilliant example of success. This conjunction of ornament and architecture, however, demands high qualities in the ornament, and insight in the artists as to what is wanted for mutual contrast or emphasis; and if this be successfully accomplished, I think itmust be conceded that the combined work gives a finer result than the uncombined excellence of each.

Mean ornament, whether of figures or plants, tends to degrade the architecture with which it is associated, and may spoil it by the main lines not properly contrasting with the adjacent architectural forms, or by the ornament being on too large a scale. I have seen in modern work, the stately dignity of a grand room utterly destroyed by colossal figures. Michelangelo, in his superb ceiling at the Sistine Chapel, has by use of gigantic figures dwarfed the vast chapel into a doll’s house. I may add that there is monumental colouring as well as monumental form: the finest examples of such colouring may be seen in many of the grand buildings in Italy and at Constantinople, notably at St. Mark’s and at Sta. Sophia; but you may also see magnificent halls and churches, coloured to look like French plum-boxes.

The elaborate system of proportioning parts to one another and to the whole, which is so important in architecture as to be its main characteristic, is equally valuable for the division of spaces for ornament.

Mouldings which form so great a feature in architecture as to have given rise to the saying that “mouldings are architecture,” give lessons in elegance of shape, and in the proper contrast of forms, that are useful to the ornamentalist who has to design the shapes of small objects; while the Corinthian capital has been the prototype of most of the floral capitals up to the present day.

It is admitted that in those periods of history when architecture, sculpture, and painting attained their highest excellence, the painter, sculptor, andarchitect have not only sympathized with one another, but each one has been no mean judge of the sister arts. At the Renaissance, and immediately before it, artists are to be found who were goldsmiths, sculptors, painters, and architects, and some few who were poets, musicians, and engineers as well.

The origin of the orders was probably in the verandah of the Greek wooden hut. In some of the paintings on the Greek vases may be seen the processes by which the Doric and Ionic capitals were evolved; but for our purpose, which is not archæology, only some of the best examples need be referred to, after the wooden hut had been converted into a marble temple.

An order consists of a column supporting an architrave, frieze, and cornice, which is called the entablature. The column generally consists of a shaft, a capital, and a base, except in the Doric columns of the Greeks and early Romans, which were baseless. The capital was the capping-piece which you now see put on the tops of story-posts by carpenters to shorten the bearing of the bressummer. The architrave was what we now call a bressummer, and bore the trusses of the roof; the fascias of the architrave show that in some instances this bressummer was composed of three balks of timber, each projecting slightly over the one below. The frieze was the wide band immediately above the architrave and below the cornice, comprising the triglyphs or ends of the trusses, and the filling in between them, which is called the metope. The metopes were left open in early Greek temples, but were eventually filled with sculpture. The cornice was the projecting boarded caves; while the slanting

Fig. 175.—The Parthenon. Greek Doric: enlarged section of annulets at A.

undersides of the mutules were copied from the slanting timbers of the roof.

I will speak first of the Greek orders, not only because they were the earliest, but because the Greeks showed the greatest artistic sensibility in their choice of forms, in the composition of lines, and in their arrangements for light and shade. I begin with theDoric. The shaft is conical, and fluted with twenty shallow segmental flutes that finished under the capital, which consists of a thick square cap called the abacus, with a circular echinus under it, finished at the bottom with rings called annulets, and a little below them is a deep narrow sunk chase called the necking, and the shaft has no base.

The Greeks were a seafaring people, mainly inhabiting the sea-shore, the islands of the Archipelago, and the edges of Asia Minor, and were thus acquainted with the forms of the sea and of shells. The echinus of the Doric capital resembles the shell of the sea-urchin, or echinus, when it has lost its spines, and was probably called after it. The ovolo moulding that was most used was called the cyma or wave. At the Parthenon, the finest example of the Doric, the architrave is plain, and was once adorned with golden shields and inscriptions; it is capped by a square moulding called the tænia or band; the frieze, with its square cymatium, is capped with a carved astragal, and is divided longitudinally by the triglyphs, projecting pieces, ornamented with two whole and two half vertical channels, from which the word triglyph takes its name; below the tænia is a narrower square moulding the width of the triglyph, and beneath it, ornamented with drops called guttæ. I may pointto this as a most artistic device both to relieve the monotony of the tænia and to weld the architrave with the frieze. The triglyphs begin at the angles of the frieze, and range centrally over all the rest of the columns, with an additional triglyph between each, though in the frieze over the larger central opening of the Propylæum there are two intermediate triglyphs; the nearly-square metopes between the triglyphs are filled with figure-sculpture. The cornice consists of the square mutule band, from which the mutules project, whose slanting underside is enriched with drops; and above the mutules is their capping, a narrow fascia under the corona; the corona or main projecting member of the cornice is throated at the bottom, and its capping consists of a wide fillet, deeply-throated, with a hawk’s-bill moulding under it. These together form the most superb piece of architectural work that exists, and has called forth the rapturous admiration of all the tasteful in the world, from the time it was built to the time of Ernest Renan, one of its latest distinguished admirers.

I have lingered over this order because it is a masterpiece for all time. Those who have seen it in England alone are possibly convinced that this praise has been ill-bestowed; yet even these would change their opinion if they saw it when perfectly white on a clear day in bright sunshine; but in London, even at its best, the clear air and fierce sun of Athens is wanting, as well as the pentelic marble, and the chances are that the sculpture in the metopes has been left out. This Doric of the Greeks is true architecture, fitted to the climate, and made by men of genius to charm the most gifted race the world has seen. Tothe Greek architect no thought and no labour was too great in designing his building, to form it so that the sun would play melodies on it from dawn to dusk. Such truly national architecture cannot be imported into a different climate without losing most of its effect, nor can it be transferred to a coarse and opaque material without losing much of its charm; while its sculpture, the finest the world has yet seen, portrayed national traditions or events connected with its faith. But even here in London, if you see paraphrases of Greek architecture just painted white on a clear sunshiny day, you will see a faint reflex of its pristine glory. The rising moon that the sun makes on the echinus, contrasted with soft graduated warm shades and sharp blue shadows, is the finest thing an architect has ever compassed. The splendid sculpture that adorned its metopes may be seen in the Elgin room of the British Museum. This one example is a model for those who seek perfection in exquisite simplicity, for almost all the mouldings are square ones, and there is no enrichment beyond the highest figure-sculpture, and one little carved astragal; and I may add, that the perfection of the whole composition of the Temple is as great as that of this part.

The example, given on account of its simplicity, is from the Temple on the river Ilissus. The column differs from that of the Doric by being of slenderer proportions, by having twenty-four deep elliptical flutes with fillets in its shaft, by having a cushioned capital inserted between the thin moulded

Fig. 176.—Entablature, capital and base of the Greek Ionic Temple on the Ilissus.

abacus, and a shallow echinus carved with the egg and tongue. The peculiarity of this cushioned cap is, that each side of the front and back faces are formed into volutes, and come down considerably below the bottom of the capital, and are carved on the faces with a shell spiral.[10]The junctions of the plain surfaces of the volutes with the projecting circular echinus are masked by a half honeysuckle. At the bottom of the shaft is a circular pedestal or base of slight projection, consisting of an upper and lower torus joined by a hollow (trochilus), the upper torus being horizontally fluted and the lower one plain, and there is no square plinth.

In this case the architrave is deep and without fascias, though the Ionic order has mostly three fascias; its capping (cymatium) consists of a fillet with a plain cyma and astragal beneath. The frieze, which has no triglyphs, is supposed to have been sculptured with figures; its cymatium consists of an ogee and astragal, to admit which the underside of the corona is deeply hollowed out; the cymatium of the corona consists of a narrow fillet and a cyma. The crowning member probably only existed on the raking sides of the pediment.

As this is not a treatise for architects, but a sketch of the subject for ornamentalists, one example is enough to show the difference between the Doric and Ionic, but the capital of the most ornate example, that of the Erechtheum, is given; its main differences from the former one being these, that theornaments on the mouldings are carved instead of only being painted, that in the entablature there are three fascias to the architrave, that the column has a neck carved with floral ornaments and a carved necking, and the sweeps of the capital as well as the spirals of the volutes are more numerous.

Fig. 177.—Side elevation, plan, and section of the Ionic capital, from the Temple on the Ilissus.Section. Section.

Fig. 177.—Side elevation, plan, and section of the Ionic capital, from the Temple on the Ilissus.

Section. Section.

Fig. 178.—Greek Ionic: half of the Capitol from the north portico of the Erechtheum at Athens.Ais a regular guilloche with coloured glass beads in the eyes.

I have given too the capital of the internal Ionic columns of Apollo Epicurius at Bassæ, to show how much it is improved by making the top of the capital curved instead of straight. The Ionic is more graceful and as a rule more ornate than the Doric, but is not so majestic. Capitals from the

Fig. 179.—Capital from the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassæ. Greek Ionic.

Erechtheum, from the Temple at Bassæ, from the last Temple of Diana at Ephesus, and from the Mausoleum are at the British Museum.

The Corinthian.

Callimachus, according to Vitruvius, invented this capital, and is supposed to have lived about 396B.C.,forty years before Alexander the Great was born. Besides the beauty of this order of the choragic monument of Lysikrates, it is the only undoubted and complete Greek specimen that we have in Europe. The main importance of the invention, besides its intrinsic beauty, is its being adopted by the Romans as their favourite order and used throughout their dominions. I give you here the story Vitruvius tells of its invention. Besides the prettiness of the story, it serves as an incitement to the reflection, that if those whose hand and eye are trained will only observe what they see, they may get notions for inventions.

“A marriageable maid, a citizen of Corinth, was taken ill and died. After her burial, her nurse gathered the things in which the maid most delighted when she was alive, put them into a basket, and carried them to the grave and put them on the top, and so that they might last the longer in the open air, covered them with a tile. By chance this basket was put on an acanthus root. The acanthus root meanwhile, pressed by the weight, put forth its leaves and shoots about spring time; these shoots growing against the sides of the basket, were forced to bend their tops by the weight of the corners of the tile and to make themselves into volutes. Then Callimachus, who from the elegance and subtlety of his sculpture was called Catatechnos by the Athenians, passing by that grave, noticed the basket and the tender growth of leaves round it, and charmed by the style and novelty of its form, made his columns among the Corinthians after that pattern.” (Vit. lib. 4, cap. i. pp. 9, 10.)

Fig. 180.—Entablature, capital and base of the Lysikrates monument. Greek Corinthian.

A Corinthian capital was found by Professor Cockerell in the Temple at Bassæ, supposed by him to have been used there. Another was found at Athens by Inwood, and there is a graceful capital of one of the engaged Corinthian columns at the Temple of Apollo Didymæus, at Branchidæ, near Miletus, of unknown date.

I do not look on work as Greek that was done after the second centuryB.C., when Greece became a Roman province.

The Corinthian capital of the monument of Lysikrates is more than one and a half times as high as the lower diameter of the column, while the Doric capital of the Parthenon is only about half a diameter to the necking, and the Ionic capital of the Erechtheum about eight-tenths.

The abacus of the capital is deep and moulded, is hollowed out horizontally on the four sides in plan, and has the sharp angles of the abacus cut off. The floral cap consists of a bottom range of sixteen plain water leaves, about half the height of the eight acanthus leaves of the upper row; these have a blossom between each pair of leaves.

Above the top, and at the sides of the centre leaf, on each of the four sides of the capital, spring two acanthus sheaths, out of each sheath spring three cauliculi; the one most distant from the centre forms a volute under one side of the angle of the abacus, and is supported by the turned-over top leaf of the sheath; the lowest cauliculi form two volutes touching one another at the centre. The third cauliculus comes from between the two former, and forms much smaller volutes than those immediately below them, touching

Fig. 181.—Capital of the Lysikrates monument. Greek Corinthian.

at the centre, but turning the reverse way to those beneath; from the middle of these springs a honeysuckle, whose top is as high as the top of the abacus, and there is a little floral sprig between the angle volutes and the honeysuckle, to relieve the bareness of the basket or bell. The foliage of this capital is exquisitely graceful, but the outline of the capital is not happy. The entablature is Ionic, to leave the frieze clear for the sculptured history of Bacchus, turning some pirates into dolphins. The architrave is deep with three equal fascias, the face of each one inclined inwards, and a cymatium. Above the cymatium of the frieze is a cornice with a heavy dentilled bed mould.

The Greeks were consummate artists, who bore in mind the adage that “rules are good for those who can do without them,” and adapted every part of their buildings to produce the effect of light and shade they wanted. The profiles of their mouldings were mostly slightly different in every example we have, and mostly approximate to conic sections, so as to have the shade less uniform, segments of circles being rarely used; and there was in Athens an affluence of excellent figure sculptors.

It has always seemed to me that the slight variations the Greeks made in their profiles to get perfection, and their passion for simplicity, were greatly due to their intimate knowledge of the nude human figure. All their recruits were exercised naked, and they must have noticed that the perfecting of the human shape by training was brought about by slight variations.

The Roman Orders.

The Romans, great people as they were in subjugating, governing, and civilizing so great a portion of the world, and possibly on that very account, were

Fig. 182.—The Tuscan order.

not artistic in the sense that the Greeks were. The Romans were slaves to easy rules and methods; most,if not all, the profiles of their mouldings were struck with compasses, and they were almost destitute of good figure sculptors. They had, however, a passion for magnificence, and for ornate stateliness and dignity, and they rarely failed to get these in their public monuments.

Besides the three orders which were taken from the debased Greek examples of their own time, the Romans added two, the order of theTuscans, and an invention of their own called theComposite.

The Tuscan is described by Vitruvius, lib. 4, cap. 7, as an incomplete Doric, but with a base and a round plinth. The portico of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, by Inigo Jones, is the best example we have of it in London. The example given is from the learned Newton Vitruvius.

One of the earliest examples, with the exception of that at Cora, which is rather debased Greek than Roman, is the example on the Theatre of Marcellus at Rome, finished by Augustus. The column is not fluted, and has no base, and the capital has been greatly altered from that of the best Greek examples. The abacus has a cymatium; the echinus has been reduced in depth, and is an ovolo, and the annulets are merely three plain fillets; the column too has a neck and a necking. In the entablature the architrave is

Fig. 183.—Roman Doric. From the Theater of Marcellus.The crowning members of the cornice are conjectural, for the whole has been broken away. See Desgodetz.

Fig. 183.—Roman Doric. From the Theater of Marcellus.

The crowning members of the cornice are conjectural, for the whole has been broken away. See Desgodetz.

Fig. 184.—Roman Ionic. Entablature, capital, and base of an angle column, at the Temple of Fortuna Virilis.

shallower than in the Greek examples. In the frieze the triglyphs are over the centres of the angle columns; the guttæ are the frustums of cones, while those of the Greeks were cylinders or with hollowed sides; the cornice has a dentilled bed mould; and the mutules have disappeared, but their edge runs through and the soffit is slanting, and ornamented alternately with coffers and small guttæ, six on face and three deep; and besides, the cymatium of the corona is capped by a large cavetto; this in the Greek examples was only the crowning member of the slanting sides of the pediment. There are Roman Doric columns at the Colosseum, at Diocletian’s Baths at Rome, and elsewhere. The Doric, best known to us, was elaborated by the Italian architects of the Renaissance.

The Ionic was not much more to the taste of the Romans than the Doric, for, with the exception of the examples in tall buildings, where the orders were piled up one over the other, the Temple of Fortuna Virilis is the only good example, although there is a very debased one at the Temple of Concord. The columns of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis somewhat resemble the Greco-Roman ones of the Temple of Bacchus at Teos; they have similar paltry capitals, and an Attic base, but their truly Roman entablature is very notably worse than that at Teos, in fact, it might be used as an example of what to avoid in profiling. The cornice is crushingly heavy for the frieze and architrave, the parts are disproportionate, the corona having almost disappeared to make room for the

Fig. 185.—Roman Corinthian. Entablature, capital, and base of the Pantheon.

extra crowning member, and the floral ornaments on some of the mouldings are gigantic. Its main importance to us is from the use made of it by the Renaissance architects, some of whom, however, greatly improved its appearance, by making it a four-faced capital, by adding a necking and putting festoons from the eyes, thus giving the capital greater depth and importance.

The Roman Corinthian.

The magnificence of this capital took the Romans, so that good examples of the other orders, except of the Composite, are rare. As I said before, the only undoubted Greek Corinthian order that has come down to us is that of the Lysikrates monument, though we have many Greco-Roman examples. The best Roman example I can give you is that of the Pantheon; the existing portico is believed by M. Chedanne to be a copy of Agrippa’s, made in the days of Septimius Severus. At any rate, it has the comparative simplicity that characterized some of the buildings just before our era. The capital has two rows of eight leaves, the upper row not rising to quite so great a height above the lower ones as these do above the necking, and there is space between the upper leaves to show the stalks of the sheaths of the cauliculi; the inner ones finish under the rim of the basket, the outer ones form the volutes under the angles of the abacus, and above these a curled leaf masks the overhanging of the angles of the abacus. From some foliage on the top of the upper

Fig. 186.—Roman Corinthian. Entablature of Jupiter Tonans.

middle leaf, a stalk runs up behind the cauliculi, and blossoms in the abacus.

It may be observed that the cauliculi of the centre and of the volute have lost the floral character and become stony. The shafts are unfluted, being of granite, and have the favourite Roman base, a plain upper and a lower torus, with two scotias separated by double astragals and fillets. The entablature consists of an architrave of three fascias, the bottom edge of whose projections are moulded, the whole architrave is capped with a cymatium consisting of a wide fillet and an ogee with an astragal beneath. The frieze is slightly shallower than the architrave, and has nothing on it but the inscription, and its cymatium is the counterpart of that of the architrave on a smaller scale. The cornice is heavy, and its bed mould consists of an uncut dentil band, an ovolo carved with the egg and tongue, and an astragal carved with the bead and reel, a modilion band with carved modilions, a shallow corona, and a deep cyma-recta-cymatium with fillets.

I have added the fine and gigantic capital of Mars Ultor and the entablature of Jupiter Tonans, which is overladen with ornament, as a contrast to the almost stern simplicity of that of the Pantheon.

I shall only draw your attention to two points in this ornamentation, the omission of the tongues between the eggs, leaving only the upright line, and the attempt to turn the egg and tongue into a foliated form. The egg itself is covered with ornament, and is set in the centre of acanthus leaves. We must praise the boldness of the author, who has given usa new ornament, but deplore his want of tasteful invention which has forced him to give a bad one.

The varieties of leaves used in capitals have been mentioned in the body of the book.

This order has been called the Composite, from the mixture of Ionic and Corinthian motives in its capital. The example given is from the Arch of Titus, erected to celebrate the taking of Jerusalem in 70A.D.The main thing to be remarked is the capital; for the entablature is Corinthian, less ornate than that of Jupiter Tonans or Jupiter Stator, and very inferior to the latter in its proportions. It may be imagined that all the foliage above the upper row of leaves in a Corinthian capital has been removed, that a carved Ionic echinus has been put in at the level of the bottom of the Corinthian cauliculi, that on the centre of the echinus there is a calix, from which a flower runs up above the top of the abacus, and from each side of the calix spring curved bands running into the hollow of the abacus and ending in heavy volutes coming down to the tops of the upper row of leaves, the lower parts of the bands and the spaces between the spirals being filled with foliage. The parts of the bell thus left bare by the omission of the sheaths of the cauliculi have two little scrolls of foliage to cover them. The worst fault of the capital is, that the upper part has no artistic connection with the lower, and taken merely as an isolated capital, its volutes are too ponderous for the rest. We must, however, give the Romans credit for the merits of the invention. They

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