Fig. 287. Capital from Ely.
Let us, however, take another step; and instead of substituting a column for the group of arch-orders, let us substitute either a smaller column for each of the four orders, thus supporting the arches by a group of four columns ([Fig. 288]); or else let these be united into one complex pillar formed of portions of four columns ([Fig. 289]); or, thirdly, let us place a colonnette under each order, grouping them, either in the solid or as detached shafts, round a central square pier (Figs. [290], [291]). In any of these methods we at once obtain the clustered column.
| Fig. 288. | Fig. 289. |
To the jambs we may apply the same process, either substituting a colonnette for the inner order, and pilasters for the outer ones, or vice versa (Figs. [292], [293]), or substituting colonnettes or pilasters for all. I do not know how early this system of using colonnettes to do merely decorative duty was introduced. We have a specimen of it in the remains of the church built by Benedict Biscop, at Monk Wearmouth, in the seventh century, where, as I have stated in a previous lecture, two baluster shafts are placed in either jamb of a doorway to support the impost.[34] To go to the far East, we find the system in use in the Mosque of Touloun, at Cairo, built, I believe, in the ninth century. In one of the doorways of the cathedral at Mayence, built about the end of the tenth century, columns and pilasters, with Corinthian capitals, and crowned by a thick impost moulding, are alternately employed to carry the four receding orders of the arch. The whole has semi-Classic details. In the western portals of St. Mark’s, at Venice (close upon the same period), we find a profusion of detached columns similarly used. They are of marble and other rich materials, and were probably brought to Venice from ancient buildings in the East.
| Fig. 290. | Fig. 291. | Fig. 292. | Fig. 293. |