R. Blomfield: Ancient Greek Architecture

Page 9

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Aegean, the Ionic order was reaching its perfect form through a similar process of systematic thought on a type definitely adopted. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor were of very early origin. Legend attributed their foundation to the earlier inhabitants of Greece, driven out by the Dorians. By the sixth century B. C. the Greek colonies were well established on the west and south-west coasts of Asia Minor, and had evolved their own characteristic architectural idiom in the Ionic order and its column, more slender than the Doric, with its moulded base and its strange characteristic capital, unsuitable from the constructional point of view in stone or marble, yet ultimately attaining the exquisite beauty of line and modelling of the capitals of the Erechtheion at Athens. Two things seem fairly certain as to the origin of this capital; first, that it was derived from the wooden horizontal head-pieces fixed on posts to reduce the bearing of the primitive wooden lintels; and, secondly, that the first suggestion of the volute reached the Ionian Greeks from the East. A crude anticipation of the volute is found in Phoenician work, and it also appears on a Hittite relief at Boghaz Keui in the middle of Asia Minor. Its origin in either case was oriental, and we have here the other motive in Greek architecture, Eastern, at any rate exotic, and, as compared with Doric, almost alien to the true Greek genius. Yet this astonishing people gave it a form as far removed from its barbarous originals, as the Doric capitals of the Parthenon from the capitals of the columns of Mycenae, and when the Greeks of both sides of the Aegean drew together after the defeat of the Persians, the Ionic order crossed the sea, and assumed a place of honour in the temples of Greece, still, however, with rare exceptions, in subordination to the Doric order. In the colonies in Asia Minor, the supremacy of the Ionic order had long been recognized. The Ionic temple of Hera at Samos, 368 ft. long by 178 ft. wide, is supposed to have been built at the end of the sixth or early in the fifth century B. C., and this was the forerunner of the great fourth-century temples of Ionia, built when Architecture had changed its direction and Hellenistic Art was beginning its adventurous career.

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R. Blomfield
Ancient Greek Architecture

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R. Blomfield Ancient Greek Architecture

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R. Blomfield
Ancient Greek Architecture