Greek Ionic Order - Its Three Parts: (c) Entablature. Other Parts: Pediments

The entablature, which is rather more than two diameters in height, is also divided into three parts, -- architrave , frieze, and cornice, -- which may be proportioned by dividing the whole height into five parts, four of which, as in the Doric, may be again equally divided between the architrave and frieze. The cornice, however, in the example referred to, does not occupy one-fifth of the entablature; but if it had a fillet over the upper moulding, which it appears to want, that would be just its proportion. If the architrave (fig. 8) be divided into nine parts, seven of them may be given to three equal fascias, which slightly project the one before the other; the first or lowest, which is vertical to the circumferential line of the inferior diameter, being covered by the second, and the second by the third. The remaining two-ninths form a band of mouldings corbelling a broad fillet, which separates the architrave from the frieze; these mouldings are enriched. The frieze (fig. 7), which does not project quite so much as the lowest fascia of the architrave, is, in the Athenian examples, quite plain; but it may be enriched with foliage, or made the receptacle of sculpture in low relief. In two examples (one at Selinus, and another at Agricentum) the frieze has the Doric triglyph. The cornice (fig. 6) projects from the face of the frieze rather more than as much as its whole height, and is composed of bed-mouldings, a corona, and crown-mouldings. The first are a carved bead and carved cyma-reversa, the former of which only occupies a portion of the height of the cornice, as the planceer is cut up inwards, in the manner represented by dotted lines in the figure, to a sufficient depth for it; the crown-mouldings which consist of a carved ovolo above a carved bead, are rather more than one-fourth of the whole cornice; and the corona occupies the rest of its height, except that small portion given to the bead of the bed-mould. A fillet above the crown-mouldings, as already intimated , is certainly necessary to complete the order and receive the antefixae, as described in the Doric, for the flank of a temple.

The pediments in the examples of Ionic are flatter than in those of the Doric, the angle made by the covering cornice with the base being, in a hexastyle, less than 12°. A vertical fillet, with a small moulding, equal in depth to the two crown-mouldings of the cornice, covers them in the pediment, in the place of the cyma-recta or ovolo used in the Doric order. The intercolumniation differs in these examples; in the one it is two diameters, and in the other three diameters and one-sixth.






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