Page:Ware - The American Vignola, 1920.djvu/16

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bed mold under the Abacus is concave, it dies into the necking like a large Congé, and the two together constitute the Bell of the Capital, Fig. 41. The Abacus is square in plan, but the Echinus, or the Bell below it, is round, like the column.

At the top of the shaft is a member called the Astragal, consisting of a Bead, Fillet, and Congé. It has a flat surface on top, as wide as the projection of the Congé, Fig. 42. At the bottom of the shaft is another Congé, called the Apophyge, below which is a broad fillet called the Cincture, Fig. 43. The Base generally has, below the base moldings, a plain member called the Plinth, which is square in plan like the Abacus.

The Shaft diminishes as it rises, Fig. 44, and the outline is not straight, but curved. This curve, which is called the Entasis, or bending, as of a bow, generally begins one-third of the way up, the lower third being cylindrical. The Entasis is not to be confounded with the Diminution, which is generally one-sixth, the upper Diameter being five-sixths of the lower.

The Pedestal also generally has a Corona and Bed Mold, but no gutter, and sometimes a Frieze, or Necking, above the Die, and a Base Molding and Plinth below it.

In the choice and use of moldings, the tastes and fashions of the Greeks and Romans were quite contrary to those of their successors in the Middle Ages. The Ancients preferred to use vertical and horizontal surfaces at right angles to each other, and seldom used an oblique line, or an acute or obtuse angle, as the Gothic architects did. They also preferred the Cyma Reversa, seldom employing the Cyma Recta, which in the Middle Ages was rather the favorite. Moreover, as has been said, the Gothic architects, in decorating a corner or edge, often cut it away to get a molding, but the Ancients raised the molding above the plane of the surface to which it was applied. In the composition and sequence of moldings also, the Classical architects generally avoid repetition, alternating large and small, plane and curved, convex and concave. The convex and concave profiles seldom describe an arc of more than 180 degrees, and except in the case of the Beak Molding and of the Bead, moldings are always separated by Fillets. When a molding is enriched, it is generally by carving ornamental forms, Fig. 45, upon it which resemble its own profile. The Greeks frequently employed elliptical and hyperbolic profiles, while the Romans generally used arcs of circles.

Among the Greeks, the forms, Fig. 46, used by the Doric race, which inhabited Greece itself and had colonies in Sicily and Italy, were much unlike those of the Ionic race', which inhabited the western coast of Asia Minor, and whose art was greatly influenced by that of Assyria and Persia. The Romans modified the Ionic and Doric styles, Fig. 47, and also devised a third, which was much more elaborate than