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Ionic order

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The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture , the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian . There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite order . Of the three classical canonic orders, the Corinthian order has the narrowest columns, followed by the Ionic order, with the Doric order having the widest columns.

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27-511: The Ionic capital is characterized by the use of volutes . The Ionic columns normally stand on a base which separates the shaft of the column from the stylobate or platform while the cap is usually enriched with egg-and-dart . The ancient architect and architectural historian Vitruvius associates the Ionic with feminine proportions (the Doric representing the masculine). The major features of

54-493: A rectangular-shaped structure overall. The Ionic anta capital, in contrast to the regular column capitals, is highly decorated and generally includes bands of alternating lotuses and flame palmettes , and bands of eggs and darts and beads and reels patterns, in order to maintain continuity with the decorative frieze lining the top of the walls. This difference with the column capitals disappeared with Roman times when anta or pilaster capitals have designs very similar to those of

81-454: A tribute to the origins of architecture and its role in the history and development of man. The channels could also have a function in channeling rainwater. In terms of structure, a triglyph may be carved from a single block with a metope, or the triglyph block may have slots cut into it to allow a separately cut metope (in stone or wood) to be slid into place, as at the Temple of Aphaea . Of

108-431: A version of such a perfectly four-sided Ionic capital that it became standard; when a Greek Ionic order was eventually reintroduced in the later 18th century Greek Revival , it conveyed an air of archaic freshness and primitive, perhaps even republican, vitality. The Ionic column is always more slender than the Doric; therefore, it always has a base: Ionic columns are eight and nine column-diameters tall, and even more in

135-603: Is a spiral, scroll-like ornament that forms the basis of the Ionic order , found in the capital of the Ionic column. It was later incorporated into Corinthian order and Composite column capitals. Four are normally to be found on an Ionic capital, eight on Composite capitals and smaller versions (sometimes called helix ) on the Corinthian capital. The word derives from the Latin voluta ("scroll"). It has been suggested that

162-452: Is generally crowned by a stone block designed to spread the load from superstructure ( entablature ) it supports, called an "anta capital" when it is structural, or sometimes " pilaster capital" if it is only decorative as often during the Roman period. In order not to protrude unduly from the wall, these anta capitals usually display a rather flat surface, so that the capital has more or less

189-506: The Antebellum colonnades of late American Greek Revival plantation houses. Ionic columns are most often fluted . After a little early experimentation, the number of hollow flutes in the shaft settled at 24. This standardization kept the fluting in a familiar proportion to the diameter of the column at any scale, even when the height of the column was exaggerated. Unlike Greek Doric fluting, which runs out to an arris or sharp edge, that

216-580: The Jandial temple near Taxila . Several examples of capitals displaying Ionic influences can be seen as far away as Patna , India , especially with the Pataliputra capital , dated to the 3rd century BC, and seemingly derived from the design of the Ionic anta capital, or the Sarnath capital , which has been described as "Perso-Ionic", or "quasi-Ionic". Vitruvius , a practicing architect who worked in

243-721: The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . The Parthenon , although it conforms mainly to the Doric order, also has some Ionic elements. A more purely Ionic mode to be seen on the Athenian Acropolis is exemplified in the Erechtheum . Following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the east, a few examples of the Ionic order can be found as far as Pakistan with

270-415: The fluted shaft (as in, for example, the neoclassical mansion Castle Coole ), or a swag of fruit and flowers may swing from the clefts or "neck" formed by the volutes. Originally, the volutes lay in a single plane ( illustration at right ); then it was seen that they could be angled out on the corners. This feature of the Ionic order made it more pliant and satisfactory than the Doric to critical eyes in

297-557: The 4th century BC: angling the volutes on the corner columns ensured that they "read" equally when seen from either front or side facade. However, some classical artists viewed this as unsatisfactory, feeling that the placement of Ionic columns at building corners required a distortion at the expense of the capital's structural logic; the Corinthian order would solve this by reading equally well from all angles. The 16th-century Renaissance architect and theorist Vincenzo Scamozzi designed

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324-565: The Doric order to being in the Tuscan order . The triglyph is largely thought to be a tectonic and skeuomorphic representation in stone of the wooden beam ends of the typical primitive hut , as described by Vitruvius and Renaissance writers. The wooden beams were notched in three separate places in order to cast their rough-cut ends mostly in shadow. Greek architecture (and later Roman architecture ) preserved this feature, as well as many other features common in original wooden buildings, as

351-467: The Ionic order are the volutes of its capital , which have been the subject of much theoretical and practical discourse, based on a brief and obscure passage in Vitruvius . The only tools required to design these features were a straight-edge, a right angle, string (to establish half-lengths) and a compass. Below the volutes, the Ionic column may have a wide collar or banding separating the capital from

378-480: The Ionic order, in the area where the Doric order is articulated with triglyphs . Roman and Renaissance practice condensed the height of the entablature by reducing the proportions of the architrave, which made the frieze more prominent. The Ionic anta capital is the Ionic version of the anta capital , the crowning portion of an anta , which is the front edge of a supporting wall in Greek temple architecture. The anta

405-586: The Meander in Lydia (now Türkiye). Renaissance architectural theorists took his hints to interpret the Ionic order as matronly in comparison to the Doric order, though not as wholly feminine as the Corinthian order. The Ionic is a natural order for post-Renaissance libraries and courts of justice, learned and civilized. Because no treatises on classical architecture survive earlier than that of Vitruvius, identification of such "meaning" in architectural elements as it

432-516: The channels themselves (within a triglyph) are called femur in Latin or meros in Greek. In the strict tradition of classical architecture, a set of guttae , the six triangular "pegs" below, always go with a triglyph above (and vice versa), and the pair of features are only found in entablatures of buildings using the Doric order. The absence of the pair effectively converts a building from being in

459-595: The column capitals. The Ionic anta capitals as can be seen in the Ionic order temple of the Erechtheion (circa 410 BCE), are characteristically rectangular Ionic anta capitals, with extensive bands of floral patterns in prolongation of adjoining friezes . The Ionic order originated in the mid-6th century BC in Ionia (broadly equivalent to modern day İzmir Province ), as well as the southwestern coastland and islands of Asia Minor settled by Ionians , where Ionic Greek

486-419: The columns has three parts: a plain architrave divided into two, or more generally three, bands, with a frieze resting on it that may be richly sculptural, and a cornice built up with dentils (like the closely spaced ends of joists), with a corona ("crown") and cyma ("ogee") molding to support the projecting roof. Pictorial, often narrative, bas-relief frieze carving provides a characteristic feature of

513-505: The complex geometry was devised by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius through the study of classical buildings and structures. Triglyph Triglyph is an architectural term for the vertically channeled tablets of the Doric frieze in classical architecture , so called because of the angular channels in them. The rectangular recessed spaces between the tri glyphs on a Doric frieze are called metopes . The raised spaces between

540-508: The evolution of the Doric order, the placing of the triglyphs evolved somewhat , especially at corners. In post-Renaissance architecture the strict conventions are sometimes abandoned, and guttae and triglyphs, alone or together, may be used somewhat randomly as ornaments. For example, the Baroque Černín Palace in Prague (1660s) has triglyphs and guttae as ornaments at the top of arches, in

567-604: The manly stamina combined with intellect of Theodore Roosevelt , he left colossal Ionic columns unfluted on the Roosevelt memorial at the American Museum of Natural History , New York City, for an unusual impression of strength and stature. Wabash Railroad architect R.E. Mohr included eight unfluted Ionic frontal columns on his 1928 design for the railroad's Delmar Boulevard station in St. Louis. The entablature resting on

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594-459: The ornament was inspired by the curve of a ram 's horns, or perhaps was derived from the natural spiral found in the ovule of a common species of clover native to Greece . Alternatively, it may simply be of geometrical origin. The ornament can be seen in Renaissance and Baroque architecture and is a common decoration in furniture design, silverware and ceramics. A method of drawing

621-428: The time of Augustus , reports that the Doric column had its initial basis in the proportions of the male body, while Ionic columns took on a "slenderness" inspired by the female body. Though he does not name his source for such a self-conscious and "literary" approach, it must be in traditions passed on from Hellenistic architects, such as Hermogenes of Priene , the architect of a famed temple of Artemis at Magnesia on

648-485: The two groups of 6th-century metopes from Foce del Sele , now in the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum , the earlier uses the first method, the later the second. There may be some variation in design within a single structure to allow for corner contraction, an adjustment of the column spacing and arrangement of the Doric frieze in a temple to make the design appear more harmonious. In

675-466: Was easily damaged by people brushing it as they passed by, Ionic fluting leaves a little flat-seeming surface of the column surface between each hollow (in fact it is a small segment of a circle around the column). In some instances, the fluting has been omitted. English architect Inigo Jones introduced a note of sobriety with plain Ionic columns on his Banqueting House, Whitehall , London, and when Beaux-Arts architect John Russell Pope wanted to convey

702-516: Was spoken. The Ionic order column was being practiced in mainland Greece in the 5th century BC. It was most popular in the Archaic Period (750–480 BC) in Ionia. The first of the great Ionic temples was the Temple of Hera on Samos , built about 570–560 BC by the architect Rhoikos . It stood for only a decade before it was leveled by an earthquake. A longer-lasting 6th century Ionic temple was

729-626: Was understood in the 5th and 4th centuries BC remains tenuous, though during the Renaissance it became part of the conventional "speech" of classicism. From the 17th century onwards, a much admired and copied version of Ionic was that which could be seen in the Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome, first clearly presented in a detailed engraving in Antoine Desgodetz , Les edifices antiques de Rome (Paris 1682). Volute A volute

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