Hellenistic Greece
In the context of ancient Greek art and culture, Hellenistic Greece corresponds to the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the classical Greek Achaean League heartlands by the Roman Republic. This culminated at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC, a crushing Roman victory in the Peloponnese that led to the destruction of Corinth and ushered in the period of Roman Greece. Hellenistic Greece's definitive end was with the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when the future emperor Augustus defeated Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, the next year taking over Alexandria, the last great center of Hellenistic Greece; the Hellenistic period began with the wars of the Diadochi, armed contests among the former generals of Alexander the Great to carve up his empire in Europe and North Africa. The wars lasted until 275 BC, witnessing the fall of both the Argead and Antipatrid dynasties of Macedonia in favor of the Antigonid dynasty; the era was marked by successive wars between the Kingdom of Macedonia and its allies against the Aetolian League, Achaean League, the city-state of Sparta.
During the reign of Philip V of Macedon, the Macedonians not only lost the Cretan War to an alliance led by Rhodes, but their erstwhile alliance with Hannibal of Carthage entangled them in the First and Second Macedonian War with ancient Rome. The perceived weakness of Macedonia in the aftermath of these conflicts encouraged Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid Empire to invade mainland Greece, yet his defeat by the Romans at Thermopylae in 191 BC and Magnesia in 190 BC secured Rome's position as the leading military power in the region. Within two decades after conquering Macedonia in 168 BC and Epirus in 167 BC, the Romans would control the whole of Greece. During the Hellenistic period the importance of Greece proper within the Greek-speaking world declined sharply; the great centers of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria respectively. Cities such as Pergamon, Ephesus and Seleucia were important, increasing urbanization of the Eastern Mediterranean was characteristic of the time.
The quests of Alexander had a number of consequences for the Greek city-states. It widened the horizons of the Greeks, making the endless conflicts between the cities which had marked the 5th and 4th centuries BC seem petty and unimportant, it led to a steady emigration of the young and ambitious, to the new Greek empires in the east. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria and the many other new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as far away as what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom survived until the end of the 1st century BC; the defeat of the Greek cities by Philip and Alexander taught the Greeks that their city-states could never again be powers in their own right, that the hegemony of Macedon and its successor states could not be challenged unless the city states united, or at least federated. The Greeks valued their local independence too much to consider actual unification, but they made several attempts to form federations through which they could hope to reassert their independence.
Following Alexander's death a struggle for power broke out among his generals, which resulted in the break-up of his empire and the establishment of a number of new kingdoms. Macedon fell to Cassander, son of Alexander's leading general Antipater, who after several years of warfare made himself master of most of the rest of Greece, he founded a new Macedonian capital at Thessaloniki and was a constructive ruler. Cassander's power was challenged by Antigonus, ruler of Anatolia, who promised the Greek cities that he would restore their freedom if they supported him; this led to successful revolts against Cassander's local rulers. In 307 BC, Antigonus's son Demetrius captured Athens and restored its democratic system, suppressed by Alexander, but in 301 BC a coalition of Cassander and the other Hellenistic kings defeated Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus, ending his challenge. After Cassander's death in 298 BC, Demetrius seized the Macedonian throne and gained control of most of Greece, he was defeated by a second coalition of Greek rulers in 285 BC, mastery of Greece passed to the king Lysimachus of Thrace.
Lysimachus was in turn defeated and killed in 280 BC. The Macedonian throne passed to Demetrius's son Antigonus II, who defeated an invasion of the Greek lands by the Gauls, who at this time were living in the Balkans; the battle against the Gauls united the Antigonids of Macedon and the Seleucids of Antioch, an alliance, directed against the wealthiest Hellenistic power, the Ptolemies of Egypt. Antigonus II ruled until his death in 239 BC, his family retained the Macedonian throne until it was abolished by the Romans in 146 BC, their control over the Greek city states was intermittent, since other rulers the Ptolemies, subsidised anti-Macedonian parties in Greece to undermine the Antigonids' power. Antigonus placed a garrison at Corinth, the strategic centre of Greece, but Athens, Rhodes and other Greek states retained substantial independence, formed the Aetolian League as a means of defending it. Sparta remained independent, but refused to join any league. In 267 BC, Ptolemy II persuaded the Greek cities to revolt against Antigonus, in what became the Chremonidian War, after the Athenian leader Chremonides.
The cities were defeated and Athens lost her independence and her democratic institutions. The Aetolian League was restricted to the Peloponnese, but on being allowed to gain control of Thebes in 245 BC became a
Andokides painter
The Andokides Painter was an ancient Athenian vase painter, active from 530 to 515 B. C, his work is unsigned and his true name unknown. He was identified as a unique artistic personality through stylistic traits found in common among several paintings; this corpus was attributed by John D. Beazley to the Andokides Painter, a name derived from the potter Andokides, whose signature appears on several of the vases bearing the painter's work, he is credited with being the originator of the red-figure vase painting technique. To be sure, he is one of the earliest painters to work in the style. In total, fourteen amphorae and two cups are attributed to his hand. Six of the amphorae are "bilingual", meaning they display both black-figure scenes. Several details regarding the artistic biography of the Andokides Painter have been suggested through connoisseurial studies of his work; as mentioned, he is thought to be the creator of the red-figure painting technique. It is however, that he worked in black-figure painting, his style suggests a link in the role of student, to the great black-figure painter Exekias.
John Boardman sees connections to Ionian art in the painter's work, suggesting that he may have been an immigrant from East Greece. Dietrich von Bothmer notes that the earliest instances of the use of a white ground in vase painting occur in the Andokides Painter's scenes indicating that he should be credited additionally with inventing the white ground technique; the invention of the red-figure technique occurred sometime around 525 B. C; the evidence for this date lies in the connections between the Andokides Painter's work and a datable monument: the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi. The frieze of the Treasury shows certain stylistic and compositional innovations, such as the introduction of three-quarter views and foreshortening, which parallel developments in the new red-figure painting, most in images by the Andokides Painter. Additionally, certain subjects depicted on the Treasury, like the struggle for the Delphic tripod, are not found in Attic painting until the Andokides Painter's red-figure scenes.
The relationship between the Treasury and the Andokides Painter's work is so strong, that some scholars have posited the vase painter was somehow involved in the frieze's production as a colorist. The Andokides Painter has always featured prominently in scholarly debates over the attribution of bilingual vases; the dispute centers on the question of authorship of the black-figure paintings: whether each scene was produced by a different artist, or if the same hand painted both scenes in both techniques. The question was first raised by Adolf Furtwängler, who suggested that the paintings were realized by two separate hands. Beazley changed his mind over the matter several times during his career in relation to works he attributed to the Andokides Painter, he came to the conclusion that two artists were involved in production of the vases, the Andokides Painter painted the red-figure pictures and another artist, who he named the Lysippides Painter, produced the black-figure pictures. Many scholars, have resisted this conclusion and question whether the Andokides Painter and the Lysippides Painter are in fact one and the same.
The uncertainty surrounding the issue was convincingly dispelled, through studies undertaken by Beth Cohen and Elizabeth Simpson. Beth Cohen in her publication Attic Bilingual Vases and Their Painters, produced a definitive study of the bilingual vase form, she observed certain details, drawing styles, themes and preferences in order to establish artistic personalities, a chronology of the vases, the relationship of the scenes to one another. Her conclusions demonstrated that the Lysippides Painter and the Andokides Painter were distinct, that shared details among the paintings were the result of collaboration, that the black-figure images were a self-contained corpus, not produced by the painter of the red-figure scenes. Elizabeth Simpson in her article "The Andokides Painter and Greek Carpentry" further settled the debate by demonstrating a key difference between the painters of the red-figure and black-figure images on vase Munich 2301. In each, the hero Herakles is shown reclining on kline.
How the couch is depicted reveals an essential difference between the renderings. In the red-figure painting, details of the couch indicate the Andokides Painter had a thorough working knowledge of carpentry practices: tenons and rails are depicted, conforming to woodworking practices and known ancient forms; the black-figure scene, lacks the same precision and accuracy. Rails and tenons are depicted in inappropriate locations, resulting in a construction that would not have been structurally sound. A small table included in the scene shows the same disparities; this discrepancy indicates two artistic personalities at work: one who had an understanding of carpentry and furniture construction, one who did not. Beazley, John D. Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. Boardman, John. Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period. London: Thames & Hudson, 1975. Boardman, John; the History of Greek Vases: Potters and Pictures. London: Thames & Hudson, 2001. Cohen, Beth. Attic Bilingual Vases and Their Painters.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1978. Hurwit, Jeffrey M; the Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B. C. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Simpson, Elizabeth. "The Andokides Painter and Greek Carpentry." In Essays in Honor of Dietrich von Bothmer. Edited by Andrew J. Clark and Jasper Gaunt, 303-16. Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum, 2002. Von Bothmer, Dietrich. "Andok
Cycladic art
The ancient Cycladic culture flourished in the islands of the Aegean Sea from c. 3300 to 1100 BCE. Along with the Minoan civilization and Mycenaean Greece, the Cycladic people are counted among the three major Aegean cultures. Cycladic art therefore comprises one of the three main branches of Aegean art; the best known type of artwork that has survived is the marble figurine, most a single full-length female figure with arms folded across the front. The type is known to archaeologists as a "FAF" for "folded-arm figure". Apart from a sharply-defined nose, the faces are a smooth blank, although there is evidence on some that they were painted. Considerable numbers of these are known, though most were removed illicitly from their unrecorded archaeological context, which seems to be a burial. All information known regarding Neolithic art of the Cyclades comes from the excavation site of Saliagos off Antiparos. Pottery of this period is similar to that of the Greek mainland. Sinclair Hood writes: "A distinctive shape is a bowl on a high foot comparable with a type which occurs in the mainland Late Neolithic".
The best-known art of this period are the marble figures called "idols" or "figurines", though neither name is accurate: the former term suggests a religious function, by no means agreed on by experts, the latter does not properly apply to the largest figures, which are nearly life size. These marble figures are seen scattered around the Aegean, suggesting that these figures were popular amongst the people of Crete and mainland Greece; the most famous of these figures are musicians: one a harp-player the other a pipe-player. Dating to 2500 BCE, these musicians are sometimes considered “the earliest extant musicians from the Aegean.” The majority of these figures, are stylized representations of the female human form having a flat, geometric quality which gives them a striking resemblance to today's modern art. However, this may be a modern misconception as there is evidence that the idols were brightly painted. A majority of the figurines are female, depicted nude, with arms folded across the stomach with the right arm held below the left.
Most writers who have considered these artifacts from an anthropological or psychological viewpoint have assumed that they are representative of a Great Goddess of nature, in a tradition continuous with that of Neolithic female figures such as the Venus of Willendorf. Although some archeologists would agree, this interpretation is not agreed on by archeologists, among whom there is no consensus on their significance, they have been variously interpreted as idols of the gods, images of death, children's dolls, other things. One authority feels they were "more than dolls and less than sacrosanct idols." Suggestions that these images were idols in the strict sense—cult objects which were the focus of ritual worship—are unsupported by any archeological evidence. What the archeological evidence does suggest is that these images were used in funerary practice: they have all been found in graves, yet at least some of them show clear signs of having been repaired, implying that they were objects valued by the deceased during life and were not made for burial.
Furthermore, larger figures were sometimes broken up so that only part of them was buried, a phenomenon for which there is no explanation. The figures were buried with both men and women; such figures were not found in every grave. While the idols are most found laid on their backs in graves, larger examples may have been set up in shrines or dwelling places. Early Cycladic art is divided into three periods: EC I, EC II, EC III; the art is by no means confined to one of these periods, in some cases representative of more than one of the Cycladic islands. The art of EC I is best represented on the islands of Paros and Amorgos, while EC II is seen on Syros, EC III on Melos; the most important earliest groups of the Grotta–Pelos culture are Pelos and Louros. Pelos figurines are of schematic type. Both males and females, in standing position with a head and face, compose the Plastiras type; the Louros type is seen as transitional, combining both naturalistic elements. Schematic figures are more found and are flat in profile, having simple forms and lack a defined head.
Naturalistic figures are small and tend to have strange or exaggerated proportions, with long necks, angular upper bodies, muscular legs. The Pelos type figurines are different than many other Cycladic figurines as for most the gender is undetermined; the most famous of the Pelos type figurines are the "violin"-shaped figurines. On these figurines there is no legs and a violin-shaped body. One particular "violin" figurine, has breasts, arms under the breasts, a pubic triangle representing a fertility goddess. However, since not all the figurines share these characteristics, no accurate conclusion can be made at this time; the Plastiras type is an early example of Cycladic figurines, named after the cemetery on Paros where they were found. The figures retain the violin-like shape and folded arm arrangement of their predecessors but differ in notable ways; the Plastiras type is the most naturalistic type of Cycladic figurine, marked by exaggerated proportions. An ovoid head with carved facial features, including ears, sits atop an elongated neck that takes up a full third of the figure's total height.
The legs were carved separ
Epiktetos
Epiktetos was an Attic vase painter in the early red-figure style. Besides Oltos, he was the most important painter of the Pioneer Group, he was active between 520 BC and 490 BC. His name translates as "newly acquired", most a reference to his slave status. At the beginning of his career, Epiktetos painted a chalice krater made by the potter Andokides, but he turned to smaller vessels, such as cups and plates. Throughout his long career, he worked for a variety of potters, including Andokides and the Nikosthenes-Pamphaios workshop. Since he signed one plate as painter and potter, he may have carried out both functions at least for some of the time; that plate was a votive offering, dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis. On one kylix, he collaborated with the Euergides Painter, he appears to have been aware of his talent, as he signed more than half of the works ascribed to him. His first vases were bilingual eye-cups. At this stage, he was technically superior to the early works of Oltos, omitted out-of-date features such as palmette-hearts.
He used the relief-line technique. Epiktetos was considered a master of the tondo, his vases were only painted on the inside. His miniature drawings were precise, his use of colour and ornament was controlled. His lines and details were balanced, with heads and limbs well-proportioned, his use of perspective on figures was convincing. John Beazley praised Epiktetos: "it is not possible to draw better, only to draw differently". John Boardman lauded him as the "greatest draughtsman in early red-figure vase painting", he preferred scenes of daily revelry to mythological scenes. He depicted mythological scenes, which lacked originality. In contrast, his everyday scenes demonstrated his innovative ideas, he showed Athenian citizens at play, at the symposion and in erotic scenes, where he develops new aspects and motifs. He played an important role in the development of the satyr as a figure expressing beast like masculinity, his tondi ceased to depict the kneeling runner characteristic of black-figure vase painting.
In some cases, the postures of figures depicted on his vases were nearly identical if their actions varied greatly. For example, a bent and twisted figure was in one case the Minotaur; the end of his career remains unclear. One of his last works was on a cup by the potter Python – here he appeared stylistically influenced by Python's main painter, Douris – another on a vase by Pistoxenos. Epiktetos's work must have been appreciated at the time, as indicated by a pelike by the Kleophrades Painter, twice falsely signed Epiktetos egraphsen; the signature was a forgery, suggesting that the vessel was considered more marketable if considered to be by Epiktetos. John Beazley: Attic red-figure vase-painters, 2nd ed. Oxford 1963, p. 70-79 John Boardman: Rotfigurige Vasen aus Athen. Die archaische Zeit, von Zabern, 4. Ed. Mainz 1994, esp. S. 64-66, ISBN 3-8053-0234-7 The Getty Museum - Biography of Epiktetos Dimitris Paleothodoros, Peeters, coll. D'Études classiques, Vol. 18, Louvain, 2004
Archaic Greece
Archaic Greece was the period in Greek history lasting from the eighth century BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical period. The period began with a massive increase in the Greek population and a series of significant changes which rendered the Greek world at the end of the eighth century unrecognisable compared to its beginning. According to Anthony Snodgrass, the Archaic period in ancient Greece was bounded by two revolutions in the Greek world, it began with a "structural revolution" which "drew the political map of the Greek world" and established the poleis, the distinctively Greek city-states, ended with the intellectual revolution of the Classical period. The Archaic period saw developments in Greek politics, international relations and culture, it laid the groundwork for the Classical period, both politically and culturally. It was in the Archaic period that the Greek alphabet developed, that the earliest surviving Greek literature was composed, that monumental sculpture and red-figure pottery began in Greece, that the hoplite became the core of Greek armies.
In Athens, the earliest institutions of the democracy were implemented under Solon, the reforms of Cleisthenes at the end of the Archaic period brought in Athenian democracy as it was during the Classical period. In Sparta, many of the institutions credited to the reforms of Lycurgus were introduced during the period, the region of Messenia was brought under Spartan control, helotage was introduced, the Peloponnesian League was founded, making Sparta a dominant power in Greece; the word "archaic" derives from the Greek word archaios, which means "old". It refers to the period in ancient Greek history before the Classical; the period is considered to have lasted from the beginning of the eighth century BC until the beginning of the fifth century BC, with the foundation of the Olympic Games in 776 BC and the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC forming notional start and end dates. The Archaic period was long considered to have been less important and interesting than the Classical period, was studied as a precursor to it.
More however, Archaic Greece has come to be studied for its own achievements. With this reassessment of the significance of the Archaic period, some scholars have objected to the term "archaic", due to its connotations in English of being primitive and outdated. No term, suggested to replace it has gained widespread currency and the term is still in use. Much of our evidence about the Classical period of ancient Greece comes from written histories, such as Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. By contrast, we have no such evidence from the Archaic period. We have written accounts of life in the period in the form of poetry, epigraphical evidence, including parts of law codes, inscriptions on votive offerings, epigrams inscribed on tombs. However, none of this evidence is in the quantity. What is lacking in written evidence, however, is made up for in the rich archaeological evidence from the Archaic Greek world. Indeed, where much of our knowledge of Classical Greek art comes from Roman copies, all of the surviving Archaic Greek art is original.
Other sources for the period are the traditions recorded by Greek writers such as Herodotus. However, these traditions are not part of any form of history. Indeed, Herodotus does not record any dates before 480 BC. Politically, the Archaic period saw the development of the polis as the predominant unit of political organisation. Many cities throughout Greece came under the rule of autocratic leaders, called "tyrants"; the period saw the development of law and systems of communal decision-making, with the earliest evidence for law codes and constitutional structures dating to the period. By the end of the Archaic period, both the Athenian and Spartan constitutions seem to have developed into their classical forms; the Archaic period saw significant urbanisation, the development of the concept of the polis as it was used in Classical Greece. By Solon's time, if not before, the word "polis" had acquired its classical meaning, though the emergence of the polis as a political community was still in progress at this point, the polis as an urban centre was a product of the eighth century.
However, the polis did not become the dominant form of socio-political organisation throughout Greece in the Archaic period, in the north and west of the country it did not become dominant until some way into the Classical period. The urbanisation process in Archaic Greece known as "synoecism" – the amalgamation of several small settlements into a single urban centre – took place in much of Greece in the eighth century BC. Both Athens and Argos, for instance, began to coalesce into single settlements around the end of that century. In some settlements, this physical unification was marked by the construction of defensive city walls, as was the case in Smyrna by the middle of the eighth century BC, Corinth by the middle of the seventh century BC, it seems that the evolution of the polis as a socio-political structure, rather than a geographical one, can be attributed to this urbanisation, as well as a significant population increase in the eighth century. These two factors created a need for a new form of political organisation, as the political systems in place at the beginning of the Archaic period became unworkable.
Though in the early part of the Classical period the city of Athens was both culturally and politically dominant, i
Acheloos Painter
The Acheloos Painter, active around 525 - 500 BCE in Athens, was a vase painter of the black-figure style. His scenes were like those of the Leagros Group. Herakles was a favorite topic, his banqueters were portrayed satirically: overweight, huge, jutting noses, so on. The heroic is made anti-heroic by parody, his preferred vase forms are hydriae. He received his name from a representation of a fight between the river god and Heracles, on Amphora F 1851 in the Berlin Antique collection, now missing. In this comic depiction, the screaming and frightened river god, in the form of a horned centaur, is being kept from escaping by an unflustered Herakles pulling him back by the horns. Hermes, stock messenger of the gods, sits at ease, his long, projecting beard juts out parallel to his projecting nose. In the heroic scenes of Greek mythology, a hero ought to be victorious over awful and implacable monsters according to the will of the divine gods. In this scene and others like it the hero demeans himself with a craven and ridiculous monster while the caricature of divinity slumps over in a state of ennui.
"Nonsense inscriptions" have nothing to say. In an unrelated scene on the opposite side, a hoplite and an archer say goodbye to their aged parents; the wrinkles are shown in the mother's neck. The hoplite's shield covers him up to his nose. On it is emblazoned an isolated running leg with a naked buttock. A dog sniffs at the hoplite's groin region. Beazley, J D; the development of Attic black-figure. Sather classical lectures, v. 24. Berkeley: University of California Press. P. 79. "3 Vases whose Painter is Acheloos Painter". Art & Archaeology Artifact Browser, Perseus Digital Library. Tufts University. Retrieved 20 June 2012
Corinthian order
The Corinthian order is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order, the earliest, followed by the Ionic order; when classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon, the Tuscan order and the Composite order. The Corinthian, with its offshoot the Composite, is the most ornate of the orders; this architectural style is characterized by slender fluted columns and elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls. There are many variations; the name Corinthian is derived from the ancient Greek city of Corinth, although the style had its own model in Roman practice, following precedents set by the Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus. It was employed in southern Gaul at the Maison Carrée, Nîmes and at the comparable podium temple at Vienne. Other prime examples noted by Mark Wilson Jones are the lower order of the Basilica Ulpia and the arch at Ancona the "column of Phocas", the "Temple of Bacchus" at Baalbek.
The Corinthian order is named for the Greek city-state of Corinth, to which it was connected in the period. However, according to the architectural historian Vitruvius, the column was created by the sculptor Callimachus an Athenian, who drew acanthus leaves growing around a votive basket, its earliest use can be traced back to the Late Classical Period. The earliest Corinthian capital was found in Bassae, dated at 427 BC. Proportion is a defining characteristic of the Corinthian order: the "coherent integration of dimensions and ratios in accordance with the principles of symmetria" are noted by Mark Wilson Jones, who finds that the ratio of total column height to column-shaft height is in a 6:5 ratio, so that, the full height of column with capital is a multiple of 6 Roman feet while the column height itself is a multiple of 5. In its proportions, the Corinthian column is similar to the Ionic column, though it is more slender, stands apart by its distinctive carved capital; the abacus upon the capital has concave sides to conform to the outscrolling corners of the capital, it may have a rosette at the center of each side.
Corinthian columns were erected on the top level of the Roman Colosseum, holding up the least weight, having the slenderest ratio of thickness to height. Their height to width ratio is about 10:1. One variant is the Tivoli Order, found at the Temple of Tivoli; the Tivoli Order's Corintinan Capital has two rows of Acanthus and its abacus is decorated with oversize fleuron in the form of hibiscus flowers with pronounced spiral pistils. The column flutes have flat tops; the frieze exhibits fruit swag suspended between bucrania. Above each swag is a rosette; the cornice does not have modillions. Indo-Corinthian capitals are capitals crowning columns or pilasters, which can be found in the northwestern Indian subcontinent, combine Hellenistic and Indian elements; these capitals are dated to the 1st centuries of our era, constitute important elements of Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara. The classical design was adapted taking a more elongated form, sometimes being combined with scrolls within the context of Buddhist stupas and temples.
Indo-Corinthian capitals incorporated figures of the Buddha or Bodhisattvas as central figures surrounded, in the shade, of the luxurious foliage of Corinthian designs. During the first flush of the Italian Renaissance, the Florentine architectural theorist Francesco di Giorgio expressed the human analogies that writers who followed Vitruvius associated with the human form, in squared drawings he made of the Corinthian capital overlaid with human heads, to show the proportions common to both; the Corinthian architrave is divided in two or three sections, which may be equal, or may bear interesting proportional relationships, to one with another. Above the plain, unadorned architrave lies the frieze, which may be richly carved with a continuous design or left plain, as at the U. S. Capitol extension. At the Capitol the proportions of architrave to frieze are 1:1. Above that, the profiles of the cornice moldings are like those of the Ionic order. If the cornice is deep, it may be supported by brackets or modillions, which are ornamental brackets used in a series under a cornice.
The Corinthian column is always fluted, the flutes of a Corinthian column may be enriched. They may be filleted, with rods nestled within the hollow flutes, or stop-fluted, with the rods rising a third of the way, to where the entasis begins. In French, these are called chandelles and sometimes terminate in carved wisps of flame, or with bellflowers. Alternatively, beading or chains of husks may take the place of the fillets in the fluting, Corinthian being the most flexible of the orders, with more opportunities for variation. Elaborating upon an offhand remark when Vitruvius accounted for the origin of its acanthus capital, it became a commonplace to identify the Corinthian column with the slender figure of a young girl. Sir William Chambers expressed the conventional comparison with the Doric order: The proportions of the orders were by the ancients formed on those of the human body, it could n
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