Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/135

 GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 77 THE IONIC ORDER. The Ionic order (No. 38 c) is especially remarkable for its scroll or volute capital. This, like so many other decorative motifs, seems to have been derived from the lotus bud of the Egyptians (No. 41 b), undergoing sundry modifications on its way from Egypt by way of Assyria to Asia Minor, but to what influence these modifications should be attributed is not at present clear. The spiral is also found in early Mycena;an jewellery and domestic articles as early as b.c. 800, and these origins might be sufficient to account for its adoption in a later period. The earliest extant Ionic capitals at Lesbos, Neandra, and Cyprus exhibit volutes of a distinctly vegetable type with a palmette mterposed, and early Ionic capitals at Delos and Athens form a link between these and later types. The columns have shafts usually about nine times the lower diameter in height, including the capital and base, having twenty-four flutes separated by fillets, and not sharp edges as in the Doric order. The earlier examples, however, have shallow flutes separated by arrises, and the flutes number forty in the shafts in the Archaic Temple at Ephesus (No. 29 k) and at Naukratis, and forty-four at Naxos. There is a moulded base (No. 40 h) usually consisting of a torus and scotia, but no square plinth. In the later examples a lower torus was added, making what is known as the Attic base. The capital consists of a pair of volutes or spirals, about two-thirds the diameter in height, on the front and back of the column, connected at their sides by what is known as the cushion, sometimes plain and sometimes orna- mented, and on the front and back an echinus moulding carved with the egg and dart, and a bead moulding under. The volutes were either formed by hand or by various geometrical processes easily acquired, one of which is shown on No. 41 G, where it will be seen it can also be formed by twisting a string round an inverted cone or common whelk shell. A further development was to make the angle capital with volutes facing the two facades by joining the two adjacent volutes at an angle approximating 45° (No. 41 p). The Temple at Bassae (Nos. 27, 29 N, o, p), is an instance of all the volutes being thus placed. The entablature varies in height, but is usually about one-fifth of the whole order. It consists of (a) an architrave usually formed as a triple fascia, probably representing superimposed beams ; (b) a frieze, sometimes plain, but often ornamented by a band of continuous sculpture (Nos. 27, 29 c) ; (c) a cornice, with no mutules, but usually with dentil ornament reminiscent of squared timbers, and having above it the corona and cyma-recta moulding. The principal examples of the Ionic order are found in Greece and Asia Minor. The Doric order provided a setting for sculptors' work. The