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Roman Styles

Roman architecture is at once more solid and more lavishly decorated than the Greek; this can be seen in the two Orders-the Tuscan, a rude form of the Donic, and the Composite, a compound of the Ionic and Corinthian. Abandoning the practice of sheathing thin columns with slabs of terra-cotta (a method also prevailing among the Etruscans) about the third century B.C., they were the first to combine the column with the arch. They employed marble, stone, and bricks, the last usually a kind of tile over 1in. thick and of varying sizes, and contrived to treat them decoratively, the bricks forming courses among rough stone and rubble, forming archivolts, etc. They covered surfaces with carving, sculpture, flat and modelled stucco, mosaics and painting, in all of which they had many variations. Capitals were decorated with large acanthus leaves of flowing lines, intricate volutes often verging into winged horses, dolphins, prows of galleys, etc. Friezes were a mass of decoration between architraves and cornices of complicated mouldings. Their foliage was of three main types. In banding and wreathing (constant forms of ornament) the leaves and flowers were of natural form, but carved and painted as compact, rounded masses, leaf over leaf in orderly manner, often entwined with ribbons. For borders, paterae, and other special features, conventionalised foliage, rather flat and erect, like the lotus, the palmette, anthemion, and rosettes, were used. They also introduced into these wreaths bandings and borders, laurel (bay) leaves, oak leaves and acorns, olive leaves and fruit, ivy, poppy leaves and flowers, myrtle, aloes, roses, palm branches and others. Generally, however, the leaf forms were highly scrolled and voluted, like the acanthus leaf; often mixed and nondescript varieties were introduced, all springing one out of the other out of one stem, producing a running, flowing pattern, covering rectangular panels, bands, or vaultings.

This was the fantastic type of ornamentation which was so successfully imitated by the Saracenic artists and became known as arabesques. But the Romans went further, for leaf, bloom, or tendril would sometimes entwine, at others actually merge into human faces, busts, and figures, or into animal forms, producing those grotesques which are so characteristic of later Roman decoration, and proved so irresistible to the Renaissance workers. Among these extravagances would be small birds and butterflies to add to the gay colouring, which was not always true to nature. Roundels and paterae were also treated with the same freedom: there were those formed of round-petalled flowers, others of acanthus leaves, of round convex bucklers, of masks, or of a curled animal. Among the ornaments employed are masks; symbols, such as thunderbolts, caducei (the winged rods, entwined with two snakes, of Apollo), talaria (the winged sandals), thyrsi (Bacchus’s sceptre entwined with vine leaves and grapes), tripods, the horn of plenty or cornucopia, the trident and bident (three- and two- pronged harpoons), arms and armour (singly or in trophies), the rudder, oar, and galley’s prow, corona of different kinds; mythological personages, winged victories bearing the palms and laurel crown, Fame with the trumpet, muses, and othet” characters; and such animal forms as the eagle, lion, wolf, horse, winged and manned horses, centaurs and other fabulous creatures. The human form was magnificently treated in low, medium, and high relief, in the round (including the pillar telamones, caryatides, and termini), and also in grotesques, as in the satyrs and the pigmies, which seem akin to the gnomes and other dwarfish creatures to be found in the traditions. of most lands. Mural Treatment.-Interior walls were usually divided into three sections: dado, middle, and entablature. Dadoes were usually dark, even black, with simple geometric designs. The middle, painted purple, green, blue, or yellow, was adorned with landscapes, seascapes, mythological subjects, battle scenes, scenes from the arenas, pastorals, floral conventional designs, in which temples, tripods, arches, and alcoves appear. These were often framed by narrow panels filled with scrolls, festoons, trophies, grotesques, or separated by candelabra. The entablature was elaborate with sculptured or painted frieze and projecting mouldings, in light colours. However, the colour schemes were often reversed, especially in the later periods. The ceilings were flat, divided into panels by beams or modelled stucco, coved or vaulted, small coffers of various shapes being formed and these, together with the spandrels, filled with foliage, figures, and grotesques, in relief, mosaic, or painting, carried out in encaustic, fresco, tempera, or sgraffito. A favourite device, which we see revived in Italy of the Renaissance, was to cover wall and ceiling with the trailing vine, sometimes, as in Assyrian ornament, shading a pergola in a natural way, more often carefully trained over trellis work, with various-shaped openings at regular intervals, filled with painted views, or through which faces peep. Later ornament presents a curious mixture of the rigidly, fantastically conventionalised motifs, in which the prototypes are difficult to discern, with the boldest realism, often incongruously applied. Colours are strong, but the tertiaries prevail, maroon, for instance, being preferred to bright reds, and orange to clear yellows.