Greek Sculptured Ornament
No. 234. Wrought Iron Scroll. Detail of Hinge, Notre Dame, Paris. Early French Gothic.
Greek sculptural ornament is comparatively devoid of natural suggestion, the branching scrolls with sheath leaves being æsthetic rather than imitative. The leaves employed bear little resemblance to those of the later Roman period, and consist generally of a succession of radial grooves with undulating or prickly edges, and are obviously adapted from the anthemion detail.
In the scrolls employed on the Choragic monument at Athens the desire was evidently play of line and silhouette.
The flexible and open form, though possible in bent metal or in painted work, is unsuitable to carving in stone. Adequate support being essential, the scrolls had to be united by the leaves, which were necessarily massed in form and decorated by channellings or grooves to give further detail and interest.
A development of the leaf treatment was the division into lobes, each lobe being channelled with a group of radial grooves ending in serrations. The lobes were divided by holes, or, as they are generally termed, eyes, more or less circular in shape, and these were connected with the base of the leaf by pipes or Tines in relief, conforming with the general radial distribution.