Fig. 249.—Four-faced Ionic capital. Portico of the Forum Triangulare.
Thus in the court of the temple of Apollo and in the first peristyle of the house of the Faun we see Ionic columns supporting a Doric entablature; in the house of the Black Wall, Doric columns with an Ionic entablature. The Doric architrave, contrary to rule, appears divided into two stripes, not only in the colonnade of the Forum, where the stripes represent a difference of material, but also in the house of the Faun, where the architrave is represented as composed of single blocks reaching from column to column ([p. 51]). In the Palaestra ([p. 165]), and in many private houses, the Doric column was lengthened, in a way quite out of harmony with the original conception, in order to make it conform to the prevailing desire for height and slender proportions. The shaft nowhere appears with the pronounced entasis and strong diminution characteristic of the type, and the capital has lost the breadth and graceful outline of the Greek Doric.
Fig. 250.—Capital of pilaster. Casa del duca d'Aumale.
The Ionic columns in the cella of the temple of Jupiter ([p. 65]) are of the Greek type, with volutes on two sides; elsewhere we find only the so-called Roman Ionic, with four volutes, a type that appears in several well defined and pleasing examples. One of these, a capital from the portico at the entrance of the Forum Triangulare, is shown in [Fig. 249]. The deep incisions of the egg-and-dart pattern, which give the egg almost the appearance of a little ball, is characteristic; it is found only at Pompeii, and there not after the Tufa Period. A still freer handling of the Ionic is seen in the capital of a pilaster in the casa del duca d'Aumale ([Fig. 250]).
The Corinthian capital appears in the usual forms, but the projecting parts are shallow, on account of the lack of resisting qualities in the stone. The best examples are the capitals of the columns and pilasters of the exedra in the house of the Faun. The workmanship here is fine, the realistic treatment of the acanthus leaves being especially noteworthy. An interesting series of variations from the normal type is seen in the capitals of the pilasters at house entrances; we have already met with a striking example of this series, ornamented with projecting busts of human figures ([Fig. 178]). The design is often so fantastic that the essential character of the Corinthian capital seems entirely lost sight of.
Fig. 251.—Altar in the court of the temple of Zeus Milichius.