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 it must 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, and architect 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

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 the Doric. 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 point to 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. To the 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 Ionic.

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

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 the ornaments 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.

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

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 396 B.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.)

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 century B.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

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

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 the Tuscans, and an invention of their own called the Composite.

The Tuscan.

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.

The Roman Doric.

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

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 Roman Ionic.

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

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

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 us a 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.

The Roman Composite.

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 70 A.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

Fig. 187.—Roman Corinthian. Half of the capital of Mars Ultor.