Capital: The Doric, Ionic and Corinthian

Doubting Thomas, Mosaic in the Narthex, 11th CE Giclee Print
24 in. x 18 in.
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Framed Mounted

The crowning feature of a column, pilaster or pier, effecting the transition from the column to the horizontal architrave course. It projects beyond the shaft of the column and is frequently carved. In Egypt the chief decorative shapes used were the conventionalized lotus flower and bud and the papyrus flower and bud.

On Persian capitals the foreparts of two bulls placed back to back were favoured. Minoan capitals were cushion-shaped. The Greeks evolved the three types of capital which have since been most widely used in western architecture: the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. The Doric capital consists of a square crowning block (abacus) and a cushion (echinus), subtly curving into the necking that joins it to the column proper. The Ionic capital consists of an abacus, a double scroll (volute) and an echinus elaborately decorated with bead-and-reel or egg-and-dart ornament.

The Corinthian capital is still more elaborate, consisting of a bell-shaped core from which long volutes rise to support the corners and shortened ones merge into a profusion of acanthus leaves in two florid rows. Byzantine architects used a form derived from the Corinthian; they flattened it and made it a more compact type of surface decoration. To the acanthus motif they added others based on basket weaving and melon ridges. Romanesque capitals are also Corinthian in shape, but display great variety of carved decorative motifs, conventionalized birds, animals and robust foliage designs. The rich carving on Gothic capitals is more deeply cut, more naturalistic and even more fertile in invention, and the capitals themselves are diverse in shape.