A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revisedHamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
History
A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revised
Hamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
Architecture -- History
The Etruscans built both structural and excavated tombs; they consisted
in general of a single chamber with a slightly arched or gabled roof,
supported in the larger tombs on heavy square piers. The interiors were
covered with pictures; externally there was little ornament except about
the gable and doorway. The latter had a stepped or moulded frame with
curious _crossettes_ or ears projecting laterally at the top. The gable
recalled the wooden roofs of Etruscan temples, but was coarse in detail,
especially in its mouldings. Sepulchral monuments of other types are
also met with, such as _cippi_ or memorial pillars, sometimes in groups
of five on a single pedestal (tomb at Albano).
Among the temples of Etruscan style that of +Jupiter Capitolinus+ on the
Capitol at Rome, destroyed by fire in 80 B.C., was the chief. Three
narrow chambers side by side formed a cella nearly square in plan,
preceded by a hexastyle porch of huge Doric, or rather Tuscan, columns
arranged in three aisles, widely spaced and carrying ponderous wooden
architraves. The roof was of wood; the cymatium and ornaments, as well
as the statues in the pediment, were of terra-cotta, painted and gilded.
The details in general showed acquaintance with Greek models, which
appeared in debased and awkward imitations of triglyphs, cornices,
antefixæ, etc.
[Illustration: FIG. 51.--TEMPLE FORTUNA VIRILIS. PLAN.]
+GREEK STYLE.+ The victories of Marcellus at Syracuse, 212 B.C., Fabius
Maximus at Tarentum (209 B.C.), Flaminius (196 B.C.), Mummius (146
B.C.), Sulla (86 B.C.), and others in the various Greek provinces,
steadily increased the vogue of Greek architecture and the number of
Greek artists in Rome. The temples of the last two centuries B.C., and
some of earlier date, though still Etruscan in plan, were in many cases
strongly Greek in the character of their details. A few have remained to
our time in tolerable preservation. The temple of +Fortuna Virilis+
(really of Fors Fortuna), of the second century (?) B.C., is a
tetrastyle prostyle pseudoperipteral temple with a high _podium_ or
base, a typical Etruscan cella, and a deep porch, now walled up, but
thoroughly Greek in the elegant details of its Ionic order (Fig. 51).
Two circular temples, both called erroneously +Temples of Vesta+, one at
Rome near the Cloaca Maxima, the other at Tivoli, belong among the
monuments of Greek style. The first was probably dedicated to Hercules,
the second probably to the Sibyls; the latter being much the better
preserved of the two. Both were surrounded by peristyles of eighteen
Corinthian columns, and probably covered by domical roofs with gilded
bronze tiles. The Corinthian order appears here complete with its
modillion cornice, but the crispness of the detail and the fineness of
the execution are Greek and not Roman. These temples date from about 72
B.C., though the one at Rome was probably rebuilt in the first century
A.D. (Fig. 52).
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--CIRCULAR TEMPLE. TIVOLI.]
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