How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

The Orders.—In Hellenic architecture there are two fully developed Orders—or combinations of Columns and Entablature—the Doric and the Ionic. To these are usually added a third, the Corinthian, which, however, though invented by the Hellenic artists, did not receive its full development as an independent order until employed by the Romans. The principal members of the classic column are the capital, shaft, and, except in the Doric order where the shaft was set directly on the stylobate, the base.

Doric Column.—It is possible that the Dorians took the character of their column originally from the example of Minoan architecture. For in a fresco at Cnossos appear the façades of three temples with columns, and the representation of the latter corresponds with the facts discovered in the actual remains of the palace. The columns are of wood, and have no base, since the shaft is let into a socket in the masonry. It is crowned by a torus, or circular cushion with a half-round edge, on which rests a square block, the abacus. The shaft differs in one respect, it narrows downward; whereas all Hellenic columns taper upward. The reason assigned for the Cretan practice is that the tree-trunk was inverted so that it might retain the sap.

All these features are reproduced in stone in the columns of the doorway of the Tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ, which has been already mentioned. The shafts of these columns are decorated with chevrons, whereas the Greeks in their best examples never decorated the shaft, nor, in fact, any other part of the structure that carried the chief strains.

Upon this crude type the Dorian architects continually improved until they had evolved an order of the most subtle refinement. In the earlier examples the diminution upward of the shaft is more pronounced than in the Parthenon, where the diameter at the bottom is 6 feet 3 inches and at the top 4 feet 9 inches, which gives a diminution of slightly over one quarter of the lower diameter. The shaft, except in one or two temples that were not completed, was always fluted. The flutes usually numbered twenty, and were elliptic in section, meeting in a sharp edge or arris, thus differing from the flat-edged fillet that separated the flutings of the Ionic and Corinthian. In order to correct the optical illusion, suggested in a diminishing shaft, that the contours are concave, they were made slightly convex, the swell of this entasis, as the convex is called, being greatest at about one-third of the distance from the bottom.

As the shaft nears the capital, it is encircled by a narrow groove or annula. At the top of the shaft is a series of annulæ, some of which are cut in the shaft and others in the lower member of the capital, the echinus, so that the shaft appears to project in a necking, into which the capital is set. The echinus is a circular cushion with an eccentric curve; a curve, that is to say, that is not part of a circle. (Compare by contrast the semi-circular curve of the torus.) Upon the echinus sets firmly the abacus, a square block with a side measurement the same as the diameter of the echinus.

The height of the column varied in its proportion to the lower diameter. In the Temple of Poseidon, at Pæstum, the height is four times the diameter; in the later example of the Parthenon nearly five and a half times, while in the Temple of Jupiter Nemæus it is six and a half times.

The intercolumniation, or space between the columns, also varies. In the older temples it was about one diameter of the column, the space between the angle columns being always less; while in the case of the Parthenon the distance varies from one diameter to 1.24; this being an instance of deviation from geometrical regularity to be referred to later.

It remains to mention the antæ. These were flat, right-angled columns, projecting slightly from the wall of the pronaos at the corners, facing the end columns. While they correspond to the latter, they differ in three respects. The shaft did not taper and was set on a small base, while the capital was distinguished by different mouldings. For the mouldings suitable to a free-standing column, supporting actual weight were felt to be unsuited for a member attached to a wall, whose functions were decorative.

Doric Entablature.—The principal members of the entablature are the architrave or supporting member, the frieze or decorative member, and the cornice or protecting member.

The architrave, as its name implies, “the chief beam” of the entablature, rests immediately upon the abacus; its edge corresponding neither with that of the abacus nor with the top edge of the shaft, but so adjusted to both as to ensure a feeling of complete stability. The architrave was usually plain[1] and crowned with a projecting fillet, called the tænia, which beneath the triglyphs, is supplemented by a lower fillet, known as the regula. On the under side of the latter were six studs, which recall perhaps the wooden pegs with which the ends of the beams in primitive construction were fastened.