Caryatides.
145. Caryatide Figure in the British Museum.
It has been already explained that the Egyptians never used caryatide figures, properly so called, to support the entablatures of their architecture, their figures being always attached to the front of the columns or piers, which were the real bearing mass. At Persepolis, and elsewhere in the East, we find figures everywhere employed supporting the throne or the platform of the palaces of the kings; not, indeed, on their heads, as the Greeks used them, but rather in their uplifted hands.
The name, however, as well as their being only used in conjunction with the Ionic order and with Ionic details, all point to an Asiatic origin for this very questionable form of art. As employed in the little Portico attached to the Erechtheium, these figures are used with so much taste, and all the ornaments are so elegant, that it is difficult to criticise or find fault; but it is nevertheless certain that it was a mistake which even the art of the Greeks could hardly conceal. To use human figures to support a cornice is unpardonable, unless it is done as a mere secondary adjunct to a building. In the Erechtheium it is a little too prominent for this, though used with as much discretion as was perhaps possible under the circumstances. Another example of the sort is shown in Woodcut No. [146], which, by employing a taller cap, avoids some of the objections to the other; but the figure itself, on the other hand, is less architectural, and so errs on the other side.
146. Caryatide Figure from the Erechtheium.
147. Telamones at Agrigentum.
Another form of this class of support is that of the Giants or Telamones, instances of which are found supporting the roof of the great Temple at Agrigentum, and in the baths of the semi-Greek city of Pompeii. As they do not actually bear the entablature, but only seem to relieve the masonry behind them, their employment is less objectionable than that of the female figures above described; but even they hardly fulfil the conditions of true art, and their place might be better filled by some more strictly architectural feature.