Plate 26. Tuscan Order by Palladio

From the writings by Vitruvius on Tuscan buildings we note that the Tuscans or Etruscans placed wooden beams, which carried the projecting roof beams, on widely spaced stone columns of Ionic-Doric form. Of the wood beams naturally nothing remains, and of the columns little or nothing. Only here and there in Tuscan localities, for instance at Vulci, have antique column capitals of Doric style been found which we are inclined to take for the ancient Tuscan. What the Italian later masters took for the Tuscan order in the ruins of Roman monuments is only a variation of the Roman-Doric architecture. Palladio, Scamozzi, Serlio, and Vignola have formulated rules for the Tuscan order as invented by them.

Palladio gives two different profiles for the capital as well as the base of the Tuscan order. In the relation of the members of the cornice we find too great a similarity in form and size, and the bed mould which undercuts the corona seems to impart to the latter too blunt an appearance.