Thursday, November 24, 2016

Corinthian Order


            There are many variations of the Corinthian order but it is the most ornate of the orders. It was named after the city of Corinth. The Corinthian is distinguish by a decorative bell shaped capitol with volutes, acanthus leaves and an elaborate cornice. In most cases the column is fluted. Now a day the Corinthian is used in federal buildings such as the U.S. Capitol building, the Supreme Court building, and the Russell Senate office building.
            There are many separate elements that make up a complete column and entablature. “At the bottom of the column is the stylobate which is a continuous flat pavement on which a row of columns is supported” (Kuiper). Rising out of the stylobate is the plinth, a square or circular block that is the lowest part of the base. At the top the plinth and forming the remainder of the base are one or more circular moldings that have varying profiles which include a torus, a scotia, and one or more fillets, or narrow bands. “The shaft, which rests upon the base, is a long, narrow, vertical cylinder that in some orders is articulated with fluting” (Kuiper). The shaft may also taper inward slightly so that it is wider at the bottom than at the top. At the top the shaft is the capital, which serves to concentrate the weight of the entablature on the shaft and also acts as an aesthetic transition between those two elements. “In its simplest form, the capital consists of three parts; the necking, which is a continuation of the shaft but which is set off from it visually by one or more narrow grooves; the echinus, a circular block that bulges outward at its uppermost portion in order to better support the abacus; and the abacus itself, a square block that directly supports the entablature above and transmits its weight to the rest of the column below” (Kuiper). The entablature is composed of three horizontal sections that are visually separated from each other by moldings and bands. The three parts of the entablature are called the architrave, frieze, and cornice. The unit used in the measurement of columns is the diameter of the shaft at the base so a column may be described as being eight diameters high. “Ancient Greek architecture developed two distinct orders, the Doric and the Ionic, together with a third capital, which, with modifications, were adopted by the Romans in the 1st century B.C. and have been used ever since in Western architecture” (Kuiper). This is how these columns were constructed and what the purpose of each part is. 
            The temple of Zeus at Athens was perhaps the most notable of the Corinthian temples. The Greek Corinthian, aside from its distinctive capital, is similar to the Ionic, but the column is somewhat more slender. “The capital, which may have been especially devised for circular structures, is of uncertain origin” (Curl). Callimachus is the legendary originator of the design. The delicate foliated details make plausible an original in metalwork. The Romans used the Corinthian order in numerous monumental works of imperial architecture. They gave it a special base, made carved additions to the cornice, and created numerous capital variations, utilizing florid leafage and sometimes human and animal figures. “The prevailing form of Roman Corinthian is seen in the Pantheon and the Maison Carrée, and it was embodied in the order as later systematized by the Italian writers of the Renaissance” (Curl). The capital joined acanthus leaves and volutes, scroll-shaped forms, in an intricate combination, and Renaissance sculptors and metalworkers, especially in Italy, France, and Spain, found in its complexity a medium for their full virtuosity.  The volutes either became mere light scrolls or were replaced by birds, rams' heads, or grotesque figures. “The Composite order, so named by the 16th-century codifiers, is actually only a variation of the Corinthian, devised by the Romans as early as the 1st cent. A.D. by forming a capital in which were combined both Corinthian foliage and the volutes and echinus, or rounded molding, of the four-cornered type of Ionic. For the other Greek orders see Doric order and Ionic order” (Curl).

            The Greeks as well as the Romans regarded the Corinthian as only a variant capital to be substituted for the Ionic. “The first known use of a Corinthian capital on the outside of a building is that of the choragic Monument of Lysicrates” (Kuiper). The Corinthian was raised to the rank of an order by the 1st-century-bc Roman writer and architect Vitruvius. The Romans adopted the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders and modified them to produce the Tuscan order, which is a simplified form of the Doric, and the Composite order, which is a combination of the Ionic and Corinthian orders. “Another Roman innovation was the superposed order; when columns adorned several successive stories of a building, they were normally of different orders, in an ascending sequence from heaviest to most slender” (Kuiper). Thus columns of the Doric order were assigned to the ground floor of a building, Ionic ones to the middle story, and Corinthian or Composite ones to the top story. To avoid the complications of separate orders for each story, the architects of the Renaissance invented the Colossal order, which is composed of columns extending the height of two or more stories of a building.
            There were many different variations of the Corinthian order that both the Greeks and the Romans used. These columns are part of architectural history and they played an important role in how we use columns today.


Although those columns may not be used anymore it is still important to know how they were developed and what roles they played in Greek and Roman history. We also have a chance to appreciate the beauty of all the detail that was put into them and we can enjoy still seeing these columns in some buildings today.

           
           
 Works Cited
The Columbia Encyclopedia, "Corinthian Order." (2013): Credo Reference Collections. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.
Curl, James Stevens, and Susan Wilson. Corinthian Order. n.p.: Oxford University Press, 2015. Oxford Reference. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.
"Corinthian Order." Britannica Online (n.d.): Britannica Online. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.
Kuiper, Kathleen. "Log in." Britannica Academic. N.p., 9 Apr. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.

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