To the walls of monumental interiors, such as temples, basilicas, and thermæ, splendor of color was given by veneering them with thin slabs of rare and richly colored marble. No limit seems to have been placed upon the costliness or amount of these precious materials. Byzantine architecture borrowed from this practice its system of interior color decoration.
[13.] See Van Dyke’s History of Paintings, p. 33.
[CHAPTER IX.]
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE—Continued.
Books Recommended: Same as for Chapter VIII. Also, Guhl and Kohner, Life of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Adams, Ruins of the Palace of Spalato. Burn, Rome and the Campagna. Cameron, Roman Baths. Mau, tr. by Kelcey, Pompeii, its Life and Art. Mazois, Ruines de Pompeii. Von Presuhn, Die neueste Ausgrabungen zu Pompeii. Wood, Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec.
THE ETRUSCAN STYLE. Although the first Greek architects were employed in Rome as early as 493 B.C., the architecture of the Republic was practically Etruscan until nearly 100 B.C. Its monuments, consisting mainly of city walls, tombs, and temples, are all marked by a general uncouthness of detail, denoting a lack of artistic refinement, but they display considerable constructive skill. In the Etruscan walls we meet with both polygonal and regularly coursed masonry; in both kinds the true arch appears as the almost universal form for gates and openings. A famous example is the Augustan Gate at Perugia, a late work rebuilt about 40 B.C., but thoroughly Etruscan in style. At Volaterræ (Volterra) is another arched gate, and in Perugia fragments of still another appear built into the modern walls.
The Etruscans built both structural and excavated tombs; they consisted in general of a single chamber with a slightly arched or gabled roof, supported in the larger tombs on heavy square piers. The interiors were covered with pictures; externally there was little ornament except about the gable and doorway. The latter had a stepped or moulded frame with curious crossettes or ears projecting laterally at the top. The gable recalled the wooden roofs of Etruscan temples, but was coarse in detail, especially in its mouldings. Sepulchral monuments of other types are also met with, such as cippi or memorial pillars, sometimes in groups of five on a single pedestal (tomb at Albano).
Among the temples of Etruscan style that of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Capitol at Rome, destroyed by fire in 80 B.C., was the chief. Three narrow chambers side by side formed a cella nearly square in plan, preceded by a hexastyle porch of huge Doric, or rather Tuscan, columns arranged in three aisles, widely spaced and carrying ponderous wooden architraves. The roof was of wood; the cymatium and ornaments, as well as the statues in the pediment, were of terra-cotta, painted and gilded. The details in general showed acquaintance with Greek models, which appeared in debased and awkward imitations of triglyphs, cornices, antefixæ, etc.
