United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Roman Corinthian, like the Greek orders, consisted of three parts, stylobate, column, and entablature, but the stylobate was much loftier, and was not graduated, except in the access before a portico. The column varied from nine and a half to ten diameters, and was always fluted with twenty-four flutes and fillets.
The architectural "orders" are divided threefold into pedestal or stylobate, column and entablature; and each of these is again divided threefold: the first into plinth, die and cornice; the second into base, shaft and capital; the third into architrave, frieze and cornice. In many cases these again lend themselves to a threefold subdivision.
What more beautiful than one of those grand temples which the heathen but cultivated Greeks erected to the worship of their unknown gods: the graduated and receding stylobate as a base for the fluted columns, rising at regular distances, in all their severe proportion and matchless harmony, with their richly carved capitals, supporting an entablature of heavy stones, most elaborately moulded and ornamented with the figures of plants and animals, and rising above this, on the ends of the temple, or over a portico several columns deep, the pediment, covered by chiseled cornices, with still richer ornaments rising from the apices and at the feet; all carved in white marble, and then spread over an area larger than any modern churches, making a forest of columns to bear aloft those ponderous beams of stone, without any thing tending to break the continuity of horizontal lines, by which the harmony and simplicity of the whole are seen.
These arched openings being often wide, a good deal of disproportion between the height of the columns and their distance apart was liable to occur; and, partly to correct this, the column was often mounted upon a pedestal, to which the name of "stylobate" has been given.
There are several points of agreement between the two: in each the columns rest on a stepped base, called the crepidoma, the uppermost step of which is the stylobate; in each the shaft of the column tapers from the lower to the upper end, is channeled or fluted vertically, and is surmounted by a projecting member called a capital; in each the entablature consists of three members architrave, frieze, and cornice.
He especially notices their scandalous proceeding upon taking up one of the great white marble blocks which form the floor or stylobate of the temple. They wanted to see what was underneath, and Dodwell, who was there, saw the foundation a substructure of Peiræic sandstone.
The column, simply set upon the stylobate, without base or pedestal, was from four to six diameters in height, with twenty flutes, having a capital of half a diameter. The great beauty of the temple was the portico in front, a forest of columns supporting the triangular pediment, about a diameter and a half to the apex, making an angle at the base of about fourteen degrees.
The column, which at Paestum was not much over four times the height of its correct diameter, is now over five times, the great overhanging capitals are reduced to reasonable dimensions, the depth of the entablature is diminished, the axis of the column is slightly inclined inwards to give the impression of stability, the shafts have the slight curve or 'entasis' just sufficiently marked to prevent the outline of the column looking incurved; the lines of the stylobate, or continuous base, on which the columns stand, and the entablature which they carry, have a slight rise toward the centre in order to correct the impression of the lines sinking in the middle; the columns at the angles are thickened, because standing free with the light all round them they would otherwise appear smaller than the columns standing against the background of the building.
He wrote on the walls with charcoal what he intended the interior decoration of his house to be: "Here a wainscoting of Parian marble; here a stylobate of cedar wood; here a ceiling painted by Eugene Delacroix; here an Aubusson tapestry; here a mantelpiece of cipolino marble; here doors on the Trianon model; here an inlaid floor of rare tropical woods."
Those that are without a cella have a raised platform and a flight of steps leading to it, one third of the diameter of the temple. The columns upon the stylobates are constructed of a height equivalent to the diameter taken between the outer edges of the stylobate walls, and of a thickness equivalent to one tenth of their height including the capitals and bases.
Word Of The Day