Architecture: Classic and Early Christian

by T. Roger Smith; John Slater

Fig. 83.—Greek Doorway. Front View. (From the Erechtheium.)

During the whole period when Greek art was being developed, the ancient and polished civilisation of Egypt constituted a most powerful and most stable influence, always present,—always, comparatively speaking, within reach,—and always the same. Of all the forms of column and capital existing in Egypt, the Greeks, however, only selected that straight-sided fluted type of which the Beni-Hassan example is the best known, but by no means the only instance. We first meet with these fluted columns at Corinth, of very sturdy proportions, and having a wide, swelling, clumsy moulding under the abacus by way of a capital. By degrees the proportions of the shaft grew more slender, and the profile of the capital more elegant and less bold, till the perfected perfections of the Greek Doric column were attained. This column is the original to which all columns with moulded capitals that have been used in architecture, from the age of Pericles to our own, may be directly or indirectly referred; while the Egyptian types which the Greeks did not select—such, for example, as the lotus-columns at Karnak—have never been perpetuated.

A different temper or taste, and partly a different history, led to the selection of the West Asiatic types of column by a section of the Greek people; but great alterations in proportion, in the treatment of the capital, and in the management of the moulded base from which the columns sprang, were made, even in the orders which occur in the Ionic buildings of Asia Minor. This was carried further when the Ionic order was made use of in Athens herself, and as a result the Attic base and the perfected Ionic capital are to be found at their best in the Erechtheium example. The Ionic order and the Corinthian, which soon followed it, are the parents,—not, it is true, of all, but of the greater part of the columns with foliated capitals that have been used in all styles and periods of architecture since. It will not be forgotten that rude types of both orders are found represented on Assyrian bas-reliefs, but still the Corinthian capital and order must be considered as the natural and, so to speak, inevitable development of the Ionic. From the Corinthian capital an unbroken series of foliated capitals can be traced down to our own day; almost the only new ornamented type ever devised since being that which takes its origin in the Romanesque block capital, known to us in England as the early Norman cushion capital: this was certainly the parent of a distinct series, though even these owe not a little to Greek originals.

We have alluded to the Ionic base. It was derived from a very tall one in use at Persepolis, and we meet with it first in the rich but clumsy forms of the bases in the Asia Minor examples. In them we find the height of the feature as used in Persia compressed, while great, and to our eyes eccentric, elaboration marked the mouldings: these the refinement of Attic taste afterwards simplified, till the profile of the well-known Attic base was produced—a base which has had as wide and lasting an influence as either of the original forms of capital.

The Corinthian order, as has been above remarked, is the natural sequel of the Ionic. Had Greek architecture continued till it fell into decadence, this order would have been the badge of it. As it was, the decadence of Greek art was Roman art, and the Corinthian order was the favourite order of the Romans; in fact all the important examples of it which remain are Roman work.

If we remember how invariably use was made of one or other of the two great types of the Greek order in all the buildings of the best Greek time, with the addition towards its close of the Corinthian order, and that these orders, a little more subdivided and a good deal modified, have formed the substratum of Roman architecture and of that in use during the last three centuries; and if we also bear in mind that nearly all the columnar architecture of Early Christian, Byzantine, Saracenic, and Gothic times, owes its forms to the same great source, we may well admit that the invention and perfecting of the orders of Greek architecture has been—with one exception—the most important event in the architectural history of the world. That exception is, of course, the introduction of the Arch.

The Ornaments.

Greek Ornaments have exerted the same wide influence over the whole course of Western art as Greek columns; and in their origin they are equally interesting as specimens of Greek skill in adapting existing types, and of Greek invention where no existing types would serve.

Few of the mouldings of Greek architecture are to be traced to anterior styles. There is nothing like them in Egyptian work, and little or nothing in Assyrian; and though a suggestion of some of them may no doubt be found in Persian examples, we must take them as having been substantially originated by Greek genius, which felt that they were wanted, designed them, and brought them far towards absolute perfection. They were of the most refined form, and when enriched were carved with consummate skill. They were executed, it must be remembered, in white marble,—a material having the finest surface, and capable of responding to the most delicate variations in contour by corresponding changes in shade or light in a manner and to a degree which no other material can equal. In the Doric, mouldings were few, and almost always convex; they became much more numerous in the later styles, and then included many of concave profile. The chief are the OVOLO, which formed the curved part of the Doric capital, and the crowning moulding of the Doric cornice; the CYMA; the BIRD’S BEAK, employed in the capitals of the antæ; the FILLETS under the Doric capital; the hollows and TORUS mouldings of the Ionic and Corinthian bases.

The profiles of these mouldings were very rarely segments of circles, but lines of varying curvature, capable of producing the most delicate changes of light and shade, and contours of the most subtle grace. Many of them correspond to conic sections, but it seems probable that the outlines were drawn by hand, and not obtained by any mechanical or mathematical method.