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Greek Styles

We are in the habit of speaking about Greek architecture and ornament as though the style was something definite and easily definable. As a matter of fact, Greek style was of slow growth, and constantly changing. In the main, however, it may be described as based, on a sense of proportion in the use of horizontal and perpendicular lines and the adaptation of ornament to the role of assisting and accentuating structural requirements. The column is the centre of the design, circular, straight, or diminished, with base (except in the Doric), shaft, and capital, supporting a well-defined entablature composed of mouldings, deep frieze, and projecting cornice, capped by a triangular pediment. The columns are often fluted or reeded, offering opportunities for decoration in the hollows; mouldings have varied contours with an endless variety of ornaments for the hollows; the capitals are voluted, foliated or floriated, adorned with sculpture, and more ornamentation is found on the frieze, the tympanum of the pediment, and the considerable flat spaces of walls, cut up by few openings and these nearly always rectangular.

Ornamentation .-Much of the ornamentation is based on survival of structural details; as in the dentils (ends of rafters), gutt~ (pegs), pater~ and bosses (pegs and carved beam ends), abacus (flat bracket or table for the superstructure), and so on. Next we have the vegetation forms, as in the acanthus leaf, the palmette, the anthemion or honeysuckle buds, the rosettes and the encarp~ or swags, many of these highly conventionalised, but always true to type, in spite of the exaggerated volutes, the spirals, and the conspicuous, expansive mixed growths, later to be misnamed arabesques. From the animal kingdom we have the bucrania, the skeleton ox head festooned with flowers, evidently derived from the sacrificial altar. It is interesting to watch the evolution of many of these motifs. Among the undated fragments of the Mycenean civilisation we find roundels with concentric ~circles and spirals, derived from local fossils and shells; the squid or octopus appears with its sack-like body and curved tentacles; the hippocampus, or sea-horse, with bony equine head, small pectoral fins, and curving tail, is there. It reappears on the friezes of Grecian temples and gave rise to that curious company of fish-tailed horse, hippocentaur (horse with man’s torso and head), hippopod (man with horse’s legs), and hippogriff (half horse, half griffon). Here we can see the early types of the wave forms, borders and mouldings-a recurring chevron, or an undulated line with equal semicircular or semi-oval depressions and elevations, or the wavy line with voluted crest; out of these were evolved the fret and meander in their many variations, just as the rope suggested the cable moulding and the twining creepers gave rise to the guilloche.

Diversity of Decorative Motifs .-In spite of these continuous patterns and flowing lines it is to be observed that Greek ornamentation does not clothe, in the sense of providing a covering, uniting mass; rather does it accentuate the horizontal, perpendicular, and diagonal lines. This is true whether we are considering sculpture, incised, in low, medium, or high relief or in the round, or inlay or painting. It is stratification, but so nobly conceived as a whole that we derive a satisfying sense of completeness in contemplating the structure with its embellishments. Yet this completeness, so far as decoration is concerned, is not derived from hard- and-fast uniformity. The reverse is the case. There is endless diversity. In sculpture we have the idealised human and animal forms, grouped and adjusted to the space to be filled; we have the strange array of humanised and manned monsters, the grotesques or creatures evolved as though they were the flowers and fruit of scrolled and involuted vegetation. To understand this we need only note the different treatment for a metope (the flat spaces in a Done frieze lying between the triglyphs or vertical fluted bands) and a tympanum (the triangular space in a pediment). In the one the figures are treated naturally, in the other they are so grouped that we have upstanding figures in the centres, and seated or crouching figures on each side. Other ornaments are dealt with in the same way. Or again, we can observe the handling of the columnar figures such as the majestic Atlantes (representations of Atlas), graceful caryatides and canephores (young women, the latter with baskets on their heads, filled with flowers and fruit), the Persians, sometimes complete, at others with pedestal or foliated terminations, which are used in place of pilasters or painted to represent them.

Without these accommodations Greek ornamentation would lose half its distinctive character, for adjustment is the true keynote here. The underlying principle of ornamentation is strict symmetry, as exemplified by the meander borders, the exact dualism of the honeysuckle device, and so on. But in broader effects symmetry is attained by means of balancing, though within a strictly limited compass. Thus, two columnar figures, one on each side of a doorway, may be shown in different attitudes, and with different attributes, but will be of equal bulk and outside measurement as to height and breadth. The curves of plants and waves are free, but are measurably similar in dimensions, unless, indeed, there is progressive increase or decrease in order to fill a given space, or if placed at a considerable height in order to preserve the semblance of continuity. In contrast to the rigid lines of the entablature and mouldings there is the entasis (or swelling out) of the cohjmn shaft, the roundels of patene and rosettes, the curves of volutes (spirals), and the charming drooping of the encarpa~ or swags, which may be single or in festooned groups, conventional or naturalistic. In association with sculpture and carving we have surface decoration, which includes incrustations of marbles, wood, and precious metals, ivory, etc., monochrome inlays, and polychrome mosaics. Colour is not reserved for the subject paintings on walls, but for the decorations, flat or carved, as well as for the statuary. This is particularly noticeable in the elaborate mouldings, forming borders, etc.