Corinthian Columns Research Articles

The Severan Commemorative Relief at Cyrene. The portraiture

On my first visit to Cyrene in summer 1972 I was so intrigued by the figurative relief standing on the south side of the so-called Valley Street, immediately to the east of the modern village of Shahat, that I decided to include it in my doctoral thesis. I visited the site in the distinguished company of the late Prof. D. E. Strong, who was then my research supervisor, and Mr. Philip Kenrick. We spent together some hours in front of this fascinating monument discussing a number of points concerning the architecture of the building to which it belonged, the identification of the figures, the iconography of the then hypothetical portraits, and the reading of the inscription. A full description and discussion of the monument were given by Professor Strong in a lecture delivered at the British Museum on the occasion of the opening of the Exhibition of Libyan Antiquities on 14th June, 1973, and later published in theSociety for Libyan Studies Report. I returned to Cyrene in summer 1973 in order to make a more thorough examination of the relief and to produce a number of detailed photographs of the heads. The contents of this article are the result of these observations and the stimulating discussions I had with Professor Strong on the subject.For a comprehensive description of the relief I refer the reader to Strong's contribution in theFourth Annual Report, but it is appropriate to recapitulate briefly. The relief in question constituted the figured frieze of the entablature of a monumental gateway resting on Corinthian columns. Beneath the frieze, which must have been more than 11m long, ran an inscription in two lines of standard monumental Greek letters. All the architectural elements, including the frieze, are carved on a very gritty and shelly limestone. The state of preservation is very poor: the figures on the right hand block are almost completely lost and elsewhere heads and limbs have fallen off, in some cases being cemented back. The best preserved are the central figures, but even here the sugary limestone has eroded to some extent (Fig.Ia).

Visceral viewpoints. My kingdom for a camera--some comments on medical technology.

MEDICINE has come to another philosophic and economic crossroads as the profession tries to come to terms with its technology, by which I mean machines, devices, gadgets, and other ways of carrying on our daily business. On the one hand, the early success of physician's assistants and nurse practitioners begins to suggest questions about how much theoretical training is necessary for medical practice, and casts the intellectual content of medical-school curricula in as much of a luxurious mold as Corinthian columns and Doric patios. On the other hand, technology has brought advances to diagnosis and therapy that parallel the walk . . .

Credit cards trump the ‘greenback’

‘With credit cards it is possible to pay for baseball tickets, an appendectomy and income taxes. Much of the retail economy rests on Corinthian columns of plastic.’

Henry Hoare's Paradise

In the early eighteenth century Henry Hoare, the banker, built a Palladian Villa near the old manor house of Stourton on the Dorset border of Wiltshire (Fig. 1). He called the place “Stourhead,” from the springs of the river Stour in the valley below. His son, Henry “the Magnificent,” completed the house and dammed the valley to form a lake, around which he made a landscape garden famous in his day and now one of the most perfect survivors of its kind. The house stands on high level ground overlooking the bare Wiltshire downs, its original appearance altered by the addition of wings and a portico (Fig. 5). Some three hundred yards to the west, at a place traditionally known as Paradise,1 the ground falls steeply into the valley where the lake is situated. This can also be approached by a road which descends dramatically from the bleak upper landscape into the lush atmosphere of the garden, where the planting of the hillsides increases the height and the impression of being in a hollow. The walk round the ...

Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.: Design for New Buildings

ACCORDING to the Soviet News, work began immediately after the War on the new headquarters in Moscow of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The designs were executed by the Russian architect Ale rey Shchusev. A single building will house the Affademy's general council, all its administrative offices, a central library for 6,000,000 volumes, and ten institutes studying the humanities. It will be erected on the right bank of the Moscow River, opposite Gorky Park and next to the Crimea Bridge. The site has an area of more than 200,000 square yards, and the main facade will be 300 yards in length. The design provides for a central building with a tower at each end, and two side blocks with semicircular entrances. f*The seven-storied central building, 132 ft. high, will stand upon a five-floor basement, from which a broad staircase leads down to the river. In the centre there will be an eight-columned portico 80 ft. high, supporting four pairs of Corinthian columns surmounted by a hexagonal dome. To the left of the portico will rise a 260-ft. pierced tower. The main facade will be faced with natural stone. The building will stand in a large park in which eventually the Museum of the History of the Earth and the Museum of the History of Life will be built.

The Origin of the Corinthian Capital

The only member of the Corinthian column that differentiates it from the Ionic column is the capital, which may be regarded primarily as a special example among the numerous variations of the volute capital.1 Ferd. Noack,2 emphasizing the continuity of Greek art, regards the Corinthian capital, like the Ionic, as a development out of the old Aeolic capital and illustrates his view by describing how, he thinks, the anta capital from Megara Hyblea (Fig. 2) developed from the Aeolic type (Fig. 1).3 His description of the process of development consists of beautiful imagery.

Pompeian Paintings and their Relation to Hellenic Masterpieces, with Special Reference to Recent Discoveries

From August, 1894, till the middle of last year, the explorers of Pompeii were employed in excavating the house of A. Vettius, a house distinguished among its fellows by its sumptuous marble fittings and lavish decoration, and still more so by the splendid series of brilliant frescoes with which its walls are still adorned.According to the official plan, the position of the house should be defined thus:—Regio VI., insula 12.It lies opposite the Casa del Labirinto, close to the north-east of the Casa del Fauno, to the south of the third tower of the North Wall, counting from the Gate of Herculaneum eastwards. It possesses no tablinum, but a very fine peristyle, the Corinthian columns of which have not (as is usually the case) flutings filled for one-third of their height with stucco painted red or yellow.