As every feature of the column thus expresses cheerful and abundant
energy, every detail of the entablature is a mode of expressing the
weight which is thus met and carried with such graceful power. The Doric
entablature is made up of three parts--architrave, frieze, and
cornice--each expressing in a different manner the idea of weight. The
architrave is a massive layer of stone with its face unbroken by any
sort of “decoration”; it projects beyond the neck of the shaft, so that
a line dropped from it would about touch the outer circumference of the
shaft at its base. In this member, then, weight is expressed by a
simple mass directly imposed upon the centres of support. The frieze is
a similar layer of masonry having its face broken up by
triglyphs--members resembling, and no doubt originating in, the
terminations of beams of timber. These triglyphs are slightly projecting
quadrilateral masses of stone, considerably higher than they are broad,
and cut into deep vertical channels. They would express little besides
the memory of the old timber construction, were it not for the _guttæ_
which hang below them, separated from them by a fillet. These guttæ, by
multiplying the vertical lines of the triglyphs, confer upon them the
appearance of pendants, the force of the earthward tendency being
increased by the fillets, whose momentary interruption of that tendency
seems to increase it. To increase what Franz Kugler calls the
“triglyphic character,” little pendants sometimes occur at the top of
the chamfered sides of the triglyphs. No one can realise the whole force
of this extremely simple means of expression except by trying what the
Doric entablature would be without it. There is, or was, a church in the
Waterloo Road, massively built and preserving pretty well all the
features of the Doric Temple, except the triglyphs and guttæ. Their
omission makes the whole building light-headed. There seems to be no
meaning in the vast current of upward force in the fluted shafts, if
that is all they have to carry. Any one can satisfy himself of this
point by simply covering the frieze, in a print of a Doric Temple, by a
slip of white paper. Of course this all-important triglyphic character,
though only expressed in the frieze, is felt to apply to the entire mass
of the entablature, of which the weight is thus _made visible_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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