Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/525

 498 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. managed in capitals associated with the oldest buildings ; nor did the members present profiles as elegant as those which we find here. The abacus was made to rest directly on a large cushion, which the tool had carved in the lower section of a tree. If this rudimentary type was soon left behind, the determining cause was not solely due to constructive requirements, which induced the architect of almost every country to place the member we call capital between the architrave and the shaft- The right angle* produced by the junction of the upright and the horizontal beam would seem to have a disturbing and unpleasant effect on the eye, when this intermediary member is wanting. Among the nations boasting an architecture strictly so called, the number of those that have been content to dispense with this mode of union is exceedingly small. The Chinese, apparently, are the only people that went about it in a systematic fashion. Everywhere else they provided the pillar, like a human body, with a head {capitum). Its very name bears witness to a vague perception of mysterious analogies which the ingenious and subtle mind of the Hellenes had grasped. As soon as the aesthetic sense awoke in the Mycenian constructor, he ceased to be satisfied with assuring durability and power of resistance to his columns only, he aimed also at making them fair to look upon ; and the capital, better than aught else, with its happy proportions, breadth, and wealth of ornament, accom- plished the desired effect. The type, which he greatly improved in succeeding ages, is the one we know in a fragmentary state at the tombs' entrances, and is no more than a copy of those which appear in the same situation about the palaces. It will cause, then, no surprise that the timbered capitals in the Tirynthian palace should be restored from the stone specimens under discussion (Pis. XL, XII.). If during the progressive stage of the capital the base remained at a standstill, the curious anomaly is to be accounted for in the stone materials of which the latter was made. This ruled its being from first to last, in despite of greater regularity of shape, a simple cubical mass interposed between the ground and the wooden support. The plinth in question is always insignificant, and barely a few centimetres above the ground, whether we meet it in the tombs' frontispiece or that of the palaces, where it really did duty as a base. It is regularly