The top part of a column, pilaster, or pier, identifiable in classical architecture as one of the five main orders: Doric, Tuscan, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. Romanesque and Gothic types include basket, bell, crocket, cushion, protomai (with animal figures), scalloped, and water-leaf.
The capital projects on each side as it rises, in order to support the abacus and unite the form of the latter (normally square) with the circular shaft of the column. The bulk of the capital may either be convex, as in the Doric order; These form the three principal types on which all capitals are based.From the prominent position it occupies in all monumental buildings, the capital is often selected for ornamentation, and is often the clearest indicator of the architectural order (see Orders of architecture).
Ancient capitals
The two earliest Egyptian capitals of importance are those which are based on the lotus and papyrus plants respectively, and these, with the palm tree capital, were the chief types employed by the Egyptians, until under the Ptolemies in the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE, various other river plants were also employed, and the conventional lotus capital went through various modifications.
Some kind of volute capital is shown in the Assyrian bas-reliefs, but no Assyrian capital has ever been found;
In the Achaemenid Persian capital the brackets are carved with the lion or the griffin projecting right and left to support the architrave; The profuse decoration underneath the bracket capital in the palaces of Xerxes at Susa and elsewhere, serves no structural function, but gives some variety to the extenuated shaft.
The earliest Aegean capital is that shown in the frescoes at Knossos in Crete (1600 BCE); Capitals of the second, concave type, include the richly carved examples of the columns flanking the Tomb of Agamemnon in Mycenae (c.
Classical capitals
The Doric capital is the simplest of the five Classical orders: it consists of the abacus above an ovolo molding, with an astragal collar set below. In the Ionic capitals of the archaic Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (560 BCE) the width of the abacus is twice that of its depth, consequently the earliest Ionic capital known was virtually a bracket capital. it illustrates the transition between the earlier Greek capital, as at Bassae, and the Roman version that Renaissance and modern architects inherited and refined.
In Roman architectural practice, capitals are briefly treated in their proper context among the detailing proper to each of the 'Orders', in the only complete architectural textbook to have survived from classical times, the Ten Books On Architecture, by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, better known just as Vitruvius, dedicated to the emperor Augustus.
Two further, specifically Roman orders of architecture have their characteristic capitals, the sturdy and primitive Tuscan capitals, typically used in military buildings, similar to Greek Doric, but with fewer small moldings in its profile, and the invented Composite capitals not even mentioned by Vitruvius, which combined Ionic volutes and Corinthian acanthus capitals, in an order that was otherwise quite similar in proportions to the Corinthian, itself an order that Romans employed much more often than Greeks.
The increasing adoption of Composite capitals signalled a trend towards freer, more inventive (and often coarser) capitals in Late Antiquity.
Indo-Corinthian capitals
Indo-Corinthian capitals are capitals crowning columns or pilasters, which can be found in the northwestern Indian subcontinent, and usually combine Hellenistic and Indian elements. Indo-Corinthian capitals also incorporated figures of the Buddha or Bodhisattvas, usually as central figures surrounded by, and often under the shade of, the luxurious foliage of Corinthian designs.
Byzantine and Gothic capitals
Byzantine capitals are of endless variety; the Roman composite capital would seem to have been the favourite type they followed at first: subsequently, the block of stone was left rough as it came from the quarry, and the sculptor, set to carve it, evolved new types of design to his own fancy, so that one rarely meets with many repetitions of the same design.
The capital in San Vitale, Ravenna shows above it the dosseret required to carry the arch, the springing of which was much wider than the abacus of the capital.
The Romanesque and Gothic capitals throughout Europe present as much variety as in the Byzantine and for the same reason, that the artist evolved his conception of the design trom the block he was carving, but in these styles it goes further, on account of the clustering of columns and piers.
The earliest type of capital in Lombardy and Germany is that which is known as the cushion-cap, in which the lower portion of the cube block has been cut away to meet the circular shaft.
In Byzantine capitals, the eagle, the lion and the lamb are occasionally carved, but treated conventionally. These capitals, however, are not equal to those of the Early English school, in which the foliage is conventionally treated as if it had been copied from metalwork, and is of infinite variety, being found in small village churches as well as in cathedrals.
Renaissance and post-Renaissance capitals
In the Renaissance period the feature became of the greatest importance and its variety almost as great as in the Byzantine and Gothic styles. A traditional 15th century Early Renaissance variant of the Composite capital turns the volutes inwards above stiffened leaf carving. In new Renaissance combinations in capital designs, most of the ornament can be traced to Roman sources. The volutes of Greek and Roman Ionic capitals lie in the same plane as the architrave above them. This may create an awkward transition at the corner, where, for example, the designer of the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis, brought the outside volute of the end capitals forward at a 45-degree angle. The problem was more satisfactorily solved by the 16th century Renaissance architect Sebastiano Serlio, who angled outwards all the volutes of his Ionic capitals. Since then, the use of antique Ionic capitals, instead of Serlio's version, has tended to lend an archaic air to the entire context, as in Greek Revival.
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