Cut a shaft with sixteen shallow flutes or facets, give it a square abacus and a low round base: the “proto-Doric” column of the Middle Kingdom rock tombs at Beni Hasan.
Rules · Capitals · Ornament · Proportion
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.
capital = 1 D; abacus = ⅐; leaves : leaves : volutes = 1 : 1 : 1; abacus diagonal = 2 D
Vitruvius tells how the sculptor Callimachus saw a basket left on the grave of a Corinthian girl, a tile on top, with acanthus growing up around it and curling under the tile, and made from it a capital. The bell is the basket, the abacus the tile, the leaves the acanthus. Later authors, beginning with Vignola, made the capital taller: 2⅓ modules, or 7⁄6 D.
Related rules
An arch pushes outward on its supports as well as down. For the same load and span the horizontal push grows as the rise falls: halve the rise and you roughly double the thrust.
H ≈ w·s² ⁄ 8f (uniform load w per metre, span s, rise f)
To find how thick the pier of an arch must be, divide the intrados into three equal parts; draw a line from the springing through the first division, and produce it beyond the springing by its own length. A vertical through the end of that line marks the outer face of the pier.
pier ≈ ¼ span (semicircle) · ≈ 0.23 span (equilateral) · less for a lancet
Divide the inside of a dome into coffers that shrink in step with the meridians as they rise, so that their perspective deepens the dome and draws the eye to the light of the lantern.
Edge the beds before the portico with box, clip box into figures of animals set facing one another, and in the garden beyond cut it into many shapes, even into the letters of the owner’s name.
Give the villa garden porticoes for sun and for shade, grottoes made in imitation of nature with tufa and shells, evergreens planted in straight rows at equal distances, and hedges of box; set vines on columns over the walks.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The Corinthian capital”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/vitruvius-corinthian-capital. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.