Glossary · C
Capital
The head of a column, which gathers the load of the entablature and passes it to the shaft. Each order has its own capital, the easiest way to tell the orders apart.
Rules that use the word
Open flowers in the light, buds in the shade. Give the columns of the tall, clerestory-lit central aisle open papyrus capitals and those of the lower aisles closed buds.
The Minoan column tapers downward. Make the timber column narrower at the foot than at the top, set it on a stone disc, and crown it with a fat cushion capital and a square abacus.
The capital: nine li square, three gates a side, nine roads each way. Lay out the royal city as a square of nine li on each side, with three gates in each wall and, within, nine roads running north–south and nine east–west, each wide enough for nine chariots abreast.
The Doric module. Divide the front of a Doric temple into modules; the column’s thickness is two modules, its height with the capital fourteen, the capital one, the architrave one, and the triglyphs one and a half high and one wide.
The Corinthian capital. The Corinthian capital is as high as the column is thick; its abacus is one seventh of that height, and the rest is divided in three: the lower leaves, the upper leaves, and the stalks from which the volutes spring.
The Tuscan column. Make the Tuscan column seven diameters high, diminish it by a quarter at the top, and give its base and capital each half a diameter.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters How to Use This Book, Post and Lintel, Walls and Openings, Domes, The Roof, The Anatomy of an Order, The Tuscan Order, The Doric Order.
A feature of Aegean Bronze Age, Achaemenid Persian, Romanesque architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Buttress · Cai · Callimachus · Cantilever · Capstone · Carpet bedding · Cartouche · Casement