caryatid

A sculptured female figure, used as a column or support for an entablature or other building element. The name derives from the ancient Greek women of Caryae sold into slavery. It is also used in a general sense for any column or support carved in human form.

A caryatid (also spelt Karyatid), is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head.

Some of the earliest known examples were found in the treasuries of Delphi, dating to about the 6th century BC, but their use as supports in the form of female figures can be traced back even farther, to ritual basins, ivory mirror handles from Phoenicia, and draped figures from archaic Greece. The best-known and most-copied examples are those of the six figures of the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis at Athens (illustration, right).

One of those original six figures, removed by Lord Elgin in the early 1800s, is now in the British Museum in London.

The Romans also copied the Erechtheion caryatids, installing copies in the Forum of Augustus and the Pantheon in Rome, and Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli.

In modern times, the practice of integrating caryatids into building facades was revived in the later 16th century and, from the examples engraved for Sebastiano Serlio's treatise on architecture, became a fixture in the decorative vocabulary of Northern Mannerism expressed by the Fontainebleau School and the engravers of designs in Antwerp. In exterior architecture, among the most famous examples is the copy of the porch on the 1822 Saint Pancras Church in London, which includes four terra cotta figures, and the many caryatids lined up on the facade of the 1893 Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. In the arts of design, the draped figure supporting an acanthus-grown basket capital taking the form of a candlestick or a table-support is a familiar cliché of neoclassical decorative arts. He stated in his 1st century BC work De architectura that the female figures of the Erechtheion represented the punishment of the women of Caryae (Greek Karyiai), a town near Sparta in Laconia, who were condemned to slavery after betraying Athens by siding with Persia in the Greco-Persian Wars.

A caryatid supporting a basket on her head is called a canephora ("basket-bearer"), representing one of the maidens who carried sacred objects used at feasts of the gods.

The male counterpart of a caryatid is referred to as a telemon (plural telemones) or Atlas (plural, atlantes) – the name refers to the legend of Atlas, who bore the sphere of the heavens on his shoulders.