The five orders compared: what changes from Tuscan to Composite

The five orders are usually listed in the sequence Serlio fixed in 1537, from the plainest and stoutest to the richest and most slender: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite. Moving along the series, the column grows taller in relation to its diameter, the capital grows richer, and the entablature gains ornament. This guide follows the series part by part. Unless another author is named, the figures are Vignola’s, the most widely used set.

Proportion

Vignola’s columns are 7, 8, 9, 10 and 10 diameters high, with an entablature a quarter of the column in each. The shaft diminishes to five-sixths of its lower diameter in the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite; the Tuscan diminishes more, to four-fifths in Vignola and to three-quarters in Vitruvius, Serlio and Palladio, which adds to its look of strength. The other writers’ heights differ by up to a diameter (see Column heights in modules and the guide to column heights by author), but none breaks the sequence from stout to slender.

Base and shaft

The Tuscan base is a single torus on a plinth, half a diameter high (Vitruvius IV.7.3). The Greek Doric has no base at all and stands directly on the stylobate. The Roman and Renaissance Doric is given one, and the models here use the Attic base for it and for the three richer orders: two tori separated by a scotia, the form Vitruvius describes in III.5.2. Vitruvius also gives a separate Ionic base, with two scotiae under a large torus, which survives in the Ionic temples of Asia Minor but was rarely used later.

The Tuscan shaft is plain. The Doric has twenty shallow flutes meeting in sharp arrises; the Ionic, Corinthian and Composite have twenty-four deeper flutes separated by flat fillets.

Capital

The Tuscan and Doric capitals are both half a diameter high and divided into three: necking, echinus and abacus. The Doric adds small rings or annulets under the echinus and a moulding to the abacus. The Ionic capital is low, a third of a diameter without its hanging volutes, and is the only one with a distinct front and side: two volutes rolled from a cushion. The Corinthian capital is a tall bell wrapped in two rows of acanthus leaves, one diameter high in Vitruvius (IV.1.11) and 7⁄6 D in Vignola, with small volutes under the corners of a concave abacus. The Composite keeps the Corinthian bell and leaves but replaces the small volutes with four large diagonal Ionic volutes over an echinus carved with egg-and-dart.

Entablature and ornament

The Tuscan entablature is plain, with an architrave of one face. The Doric frieze is divided into triglyphs and square metopes, with guttae under the architrave and mutules under the cornice; it is the only order whose frieze fixes the spacing of its columns (Triglyphs over every column, and square metopes). The Ionic architrave has three fasciae, the frieze is plain or carved, and the cornice has dentils; Palladio often makes the frieze swell outward. The Corinthian has three fasciae and adds scrolled modillions above the dentils. Vignola’s Composite has two fasciae and plainer, block-shaped modillions.

Vitruvius gives each ornament a timber origin: triglyphs as the ends of beams, mutules as the ends of principal rafters, dentils as the ends of the common rafters (IV.2). He adds that the Corinthian had no entablature of its own and borrowed either the Doric or the Ionic (IV.1.2).

Character

Vitruvius describes the Doric as taking the proportions and strength of a man, the Ionic the slenderness and ornament of a matron, and the Corinthian the slight figure of a young girl (IV.1.6–8). He assigns them to gods by the same reasoning: Doric for Minerva, Mars and Hercules; Ionic for Juno, Diana and Bacchus; Corinthian for Venus, Flora and the Nymphs (I.2.5). He treats the Tuscan as the Etruscan way of building temples, not as an order.

Serlio extended the scheme to the whole series and to new uses. The Tuscan became the order of fortresses, city gates and prisons; the Doric of churches dedicated to soldier saints; the Corinthian of churches of the Virgin. The Composite, absent from Vitruvius, was the order of the triumphal arch, and Scamozzi named it the Roman order. By the eighteenth century the choice of order was expected to announce the purpose and rank of a building.

℟Each order has a character

Use the orders according to their character: the Doric for strength and gravity, the Ionic for a middle dignity, the Corinthian for delicacy and splendour.