Unending Architectural Orders
As a conqueror, the Roman Empire may have been unique.
They resisted the urge to replace the culture of subjugated nations with their own. Often, they even adopted aspects of their victim’s traditions.
Of course, some of the “adopting” came in the form of plundering. Ask the Greeks. Along with the jewelry and slaves they claimed, Roman generals returned home with stolen sculpture, metalwork, and even the Greek pantheon of gods. Rather than look down upon the conquered nation as inferior in thought and body, the Roman’s admired their Meditarrenean brethren. The product of their minds and hands was praised and began to influence the Roman’s artistic mindset.
A Roman Triumph - Octavian’s procession after the conquest of Illyria, Egypt, and victory at Actium (Greece). Peter Paul Rubens
Roman copy of Greek Doryphoros, Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
New Fashion
The samples transported back to Rome were not enough to fill the demand of the peninsula’s culture-hungry residents. Studios opened, dedicated to reproducing the Greek flavour of art and architecture. From the Doryphoros -- a sculpture of a muscular Greek warrior leaning on his spear -- to entire columns harvested from Greek city states.
Soon, Roman architects -- exploratory artists in their own right -- were designing new columns. These new compositions were meshings of the familiar and the avant garde.
The New Orders
They may not have realized it, but the Romans were founding the final two Orders of Architecture. The Roman architect and author, Vitruvius, categorized the first three: the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian, all Greek precedents.
The remaining Orders, the Tuscan and the Composite, were not named until the Renaissance, over a millennium after their creation. Like the culture itself, these Roman Orders were a patchwork of inspirations from conqueror and subjugate alike.
Tuscan Order
Composite Order
Etruscan Architecture, Villa Giulia, Rome
John Wilkes painting of Tuscan and Doric Orders
Entablature
Take, for instance, the Tuscan column and entablature -- the shaft and the horizontal moldings it carries. It appears to be a cross-pollination of the Doric and the Etruscan -- the predecessors of Rome.
The result was a column that looked even more squat and stocky than the Doric. This pillar averaged a height of six diameters of the thickest part of its shaft. The column’s base was composed of -- from bottom up -- a plinth (block), a torus (donut), then the fillet (vertical segment of a cylinder), and the apophyge or conge (simply, a curve from the fillet to the column itself). It sounds like a lot, but the effect was excessively simple.
Simplicity
That simplicity was continued at the top of the Tuscan column. Its capital was composed of an unadorned astragal (slightly bulging ring), necking (cylindrical segment), echinus (a widening collar), and finally a square abacus (the plate that caps the capital). Above that, the entablature’s architrave and frieze -- were completely blank facings.
But identifying the Tuscan order is far simpler than all that. Look at the column. Is it devoid of flutes, the vertical grooves from bottom to top? Then it’s Tuscan.
Components of the Tuscan Order
Composite Order
The final recognized Order was the Composite. It’s primarily taken from the Ionic, with 24 flutes in a very slender column. The capital, at first glance, appears to be Corinthian, except for one notable difference. The top layer of acanthus leaves is replaced by the Ionic Order’s scroll-like volutes.
A composite capital in situ at Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli
Composite capital as drawn by Andrea Palladio
Her Majesty’s Theatre, London
Colossal Order
The Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, and Composite are the only recognized Classical Orders, but there are more of the non-classical variety.
The “giant” or “colossal” Order’s difference was size. Its otherwise Classical columns exceeded the accepted limit of being one floor in height. Her Majesty’s Theatre in London features colossal Corinthian columns that span two levels of the building.
Bespoke
There are also a whole basket of “nonce” orders, each generally created for a single project. They involved replacing classical elements with unusual or local motifs. The “Ammonite Order” was unveiled in 1789 by its creator George Dance; he replaced the volutes of a capital with ammonites, a fossilized mollusc. The “American Orders” switched the acanthus leaves with tobacco or corn cobs. New one-off combinations are produced by plaster moulding studios every year.
Whether they are architects, designers, or craftsman, when the artistically affected are involved, nothing is set in stone… or marble or plaster.
Tobacco Leaf Capital at the US Capitol
Corn Capital at Litchfield Villa, Brooklyn, NY
Ammonite Order