calculated to express actual sufferance from the burthen borne by them.
The shafts bulge towards the base, and the capitals likewise swell as
they approach their juncture with the shafts; shaft and capital being
usually clothed with vertical convex mouldings: the exact reverse of the
Doric shaft, which, as will be shown, had exactly the opposite idea to
convey. Unlike the repose and sufficiency of the Doric column, the
Egyptian expresses violent and yet insufficient energy, which seems to
rush towards and to be partially driven back by the entablature. The
immense thickness of wall, wherever it was shown, was emphasised by
sculpture in very low relief. These are only the main elements of an
effect which, and the means of producing which, will be more forcibly
felt by a corresponding analysis of Greek architecture, which culminates
in the Doric of the Parthenon.
This temple has a double basement, the first of which is on a “dead
level”; from this rises the second basement, in which the true life of
the building commences. In 1837 Mr. Pennethorne announced the important
discovery that the lines of this basement, together with those of the
entablature, are not horizontal lines, but parabolic curves; and Mr.
Penrose, in 1852, in a work published by the Society of Dilettanti,
gave the actual measurements of these curves; which are found to prevail
not only in the horizontal but in all the vertical lines and faces, in
the inclined lines of the pediment, and in the axes of the shafts. These
curves are so subtle--the rise being only an inch or two in as many
hundred feet--that they are rather felt than seen; but that they are
felt, even by the comparatively gross modern eye, is clear enough from
the different way in which it is affected by the Parthenon itself and by
any imitation of it by modern builders. It is probable that these curves
were in some instances meant to correct optical illusions, by which
straight lines would look hollow, etc.; but a far greater motive for
their introduction was an effect of animation in the whole and in every
part and of unity through the predominance of general curves, which a
cultivated eye can discern very easily, but which is probably beyond our
present powers of analysis. Above the basement the Doric Temple
externally--and the Greek Temple’s architectural beauty is all
outside--consists of two parts, of opposite and exactly balanced
significance. The first consists of a colonnade of shafts, each of which
rises at once from the stylobate, without the footing or “base” found in
subsequent styles. The shaft diminishes somewhat rapidly, until it
impinges upon and ends in the capital; which is an hyperbolic “ovolo,”
spreading widely under the “abacus” or tile, which constitutes the
neutral point, or point of rest, between the column and the entablature.
The outlines of the shaft (always fluted in early Greek architecture)
converge from the base towards the capital--not in straight lines, but
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account