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Updated: June 25, 2025
Why should we, in designing a capital or cornice, still cling to the classic acanthus or honeysuckle ornament, or even the English ivy, when we have such a fund of our own? The maize and the sugarcane, the potato blossom and the cotton boll afford so many mines of treasure, that it is surprising that they have not already been worked.
This bell is clothed with foliage, symmetrically arranged and much of it studied, but in a conventional manner, from the graceful foliage of the acanthus; between the two small volutes appears an Assyrian honeysuckle, and tendrils of honeysuckle, conventionally treated, occupy part of the upper portion of the capital.
In his endless pedigree, reckoning deities by decimals, innumerable kings, and scores of great heroes, chiefs, and priests. Nor in person, did he belie his origin. No far-descended dwarf was he, the least of a receding race. He stood like a palm tree; about whose acanthus capital droops not more gracefully the silken fringes, than Media's locks upon his noble brow.
The bellflower, urn, festoons, and acanthus were all favorites of his for decoration. He made some elaborate and startling designs for beds, but the best known ones are charming with slender turned posts or reeded posts, and often the plain ones were made of painted satinwood.
In the Ionic style, the column has a distinct base, is more tall and slender, and its capital has two volutes, or spiral moldings. The capital of the Corinthian column is peculiar, representing flower calices and leaves, "pointing upwards, and curving like natural plants." The acanthus, on account of its graceful form, was generally copied.
Rossellino, who loved to carve garlands of acanthus and small sweet amorini, has conferred immortality on some of the men whose tombs he adorned in basso-rilièvo, and they are remembered because of him; but the cardinal has another claim. He is beautiful in himself as he rests there, his young face set in the peace that passes all understanding, his thin hands folded on his breast.
"Meanwhile let Sicily replace for you the gardens of Hesperides; may the goddesses of the fields, woods, and fountains scatter flowers on your path, and may white doves build their nests on every acanthus of the columns of your house." PETRONIUS was not mistaken.
In this Exposition three kinds of columns are used, the Doric, which the Greeks favored, with the very simple top or capital; the Ionic, with the spiral scroll for the capital, and the Corinthian, with the acanthus flowing over the top, and the Composite which uses features from all the other three." "Do you happen to know how the acanthus design was made? Well, Vitruvius tells the story.
Not the form, for it is but a bust rising from a capital of acanthus leaves, which curve around the breast and arms and turn gracefully outward, but the face, whose modest maiden beauty can find no peer among goddesses or mortals. So looked she on the field of Ennæ that "fairer flower," so soon to be gathered by "gloomy Dis."
The carvings unearthed in the ruins are very beautiful and most of them in high relief work, representing trailing vines, stately palms, clusters of dates, roses and acanthus. Various animal designs are also shown and one of the famous seven-branched candlesticks which accompanied the Ark of the Covenant.
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