Ionic

DESCRIPTION:

Ionic shafts were taller than Doric ones. This makes the columns look slender. They also had
flutes, which are lines carved into them from top to bottom. The shafts also had a special
characteristic: entasis, which is a little bulge in the columns make the columns look straight,
even at a distance [because since you would see the building from eye level, the shafts would
appear to get narrower as they rise, so this bulge makes up for that - so it looks straight to your
eye but it really isn't !] . The frieze is plain. The bases were large and looked like a set of stacked
rings. Ionic capitals consist of a scrolls above the shaft. The Ionic style is a little more decorative
than the Doric.

The Temple of Athena Nike in Athens, shown above, is one of the most famous Ionic buildings in the world. It is
located on the Acropolis, very close to the Parthenon (shown in the Doric section above).

The Little Rock AME Zion Church in downtown Charlotte is a good example showing Ionic columns. It was built in
1911 and designed by J. M. McMichael. Mr. McMichael did not like steeples, so the church has instead two cupolas
[the short towers you see] on the top, one on the left and one on the right.
Ionic Columns

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The Ionic column is typically identified by its capital, which includes large paired spiral scrolls, or
volutes. It has the tallest base of the three classic Greek orders. Columns in this style can be found
throughout Capitol Hill, including the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court Building and the exterior of the
Longworth House Office Building.

The Old Senate Chamber, located in the U.S. Capitol Building, is a two-story room modeled after the
amphitheaters of antiquity. Eight Ionic columns of variegated marble quarried along the Potomac River
support the Chambers gallery on the east wall; they were inspired by the columns of the Erechtheion in
Athens.

The Supreme Court Buildings grand Court Chamber is a dignified room lighted by side windows behind
screens of Ionic columns. The 24 columns are made of Old Convent Quarry Siena marble from Liguria,
Italy.

The Longworth House Office Building is one of Washingtons best examples of the Neo-Classical
Revival architecture. Its exterior features Ionic columns that support a well-proportioned entablature and
are used for the building's five porticoes, the principal one of which is topped by a pediment.
What Is the Ionic Order?

Although most ancient Greek and Roman buildings are now ruins, we can still picture them. We
see them in movies and magazines because these buildings set the standards for what we still
consider to be good architecture. We just like our modern architecture to be a little less...ruined.

Ruins of a Greek temple

The Ionic order is one of the three orders of classical architecture, alongside the Doric and
Corinthian orders. Classical architecture refers to the architecture styles of ancient Greece and
Rome, which set the standards for architecture in the Western world. These ancient civilizations
defined what we consider to be architectural beauty.

Ionic Temple at Yorkshire

Columns

The Ionic order is defined by the Ionic column. In ancient Greece, buildings were made with a
number of columns that held up their roofs. The column was the architectural staple of Greece,
both from a practical and artistic standpoint. Columns supported the weight of the roof and let
the Greeks build larger temples.

A column was made up of several parts. The base is the stone platform at the bottom of the
column. There are usually multiple layers to the base. On top of the base is the shaft, the long
part of the column with groves running down the sides. At the very top is the capital, the
decorative stone that bears the weight of the roof. Ionic columns tend to be more slender, but the
defining feature of the Ionic order is the volute. The volute is the spiral, scroll-like capital of the
Ionic column.

Ionic Capital

Besides a column, the Ionic order also has specific entablature. The entablature is the part of the
roof that rests on top of the column and consists of the architrave, the frieze, and the cornice:

The architrave is the long beam that supports the weight directly above the column.
The frieze is a strip above the architrave.
And the cornice is the top weight-bearing part which juts outwards.

The cornice in the ionic order has saw-like squared edges. In architecture, the post and lintel
system refers to any building in which the weight of the roof is supported by load-bearing
upright sections and a horizontal section on top of those. The entablature is a lintel, and the
columns are the posts. The entablature was meant to be functional, so it could help support the
weight of the roof but was also often carved or decorated.

Ionic column and entablature

History

The Ionic order was developed in the mid-6th century BCE by Ionian Greeks on the islands near
present-day Turkey. By the 5th century BCE, it was popular in mainland Greece. The first time it
was used on a major temple was for the Temple of Hera on Samos, built around 570 BCE by the
Greek architect Rhoikos.

Another Ionic building was the Temple of Artemis, which was said to be one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world. According to the Roman architect Vitruvius, the Doric order was
based on the proportions of the male body, while the Ionic order was modeled after the more
graceful elements of the female body.

Painting of an Ancient Ionic Temple

The ancient Greeks and Romans were obsessed with mathematical, perfect proportions of bodies,
architecture, and art. These proportions were based on the ancient geometry, algebra, and
trigonometry of these civilizations. To them, everything that was perfect could be represented in
formulas of perfect proportions. An arm of a statue might be exactly 25% longer than the torso,
for example.

Architecture. noting or pertaining to one of the five classical orders that in ancient Greece
consisted of a fluted column with a molded base and a capital composed of four volutes, usually
parallel to the architrave with a pulvinus connecting a pair on each side of the column, and an
entablature typically consisting of an architrave of three fascias, a richly ornamented frieze, and a
cornice corbeled out on egg-and-dart and dentil moldings, with the frieze sometimes omitted.
Roman and Renaissance examples are often more elaborate, and usually set the volutes of the
capitals at 45 to the architrave.
Compare composite (def 3), Corinthian (def 2), Doric (def 3), Tuscan (def 2).

The Ionic Order

The second style that was invented was known as Ionic and can be most easily
recognized by the scrolled capital on top of the columns. This style was also created in
the Archaic period and was used more frequently on the Aegean Islands than on the
Greek mainland.

Besides the scrolled capital which is its most recognizable feature, the fluted columns
are thinner and sit on a base. The triglyphs and metopes are replaced by a plain,
undecorated frieze.

Column of the Erechtheion, Acropolis of Athens, 421-406 BC

photo- Guillaume Piolle / public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A beautiful Renaissance example can be seen in La Rotunda (Villa Capra) which was
designed by Palladio in Vicenza in the middle of the 16th century. Palladian
architecture had an enormous influence on both Renaissance and later architecture.
Palladio was very aware the the proportions and harmony that were used to create the
original Greek temples.

Here is a detail of one of four symmetrical porches, again the one change that Palladio
made was to use smooth columns instead of fluted columns. La Rotunda the influence
behind the American president Thomas Jefferson's home of Monticello in Virginia.
However Monticello used the Doric Order on its porches.

Porch of the Villa Capra (La Rotunda), Andrea Palladio, Vicenza, began 1567
Ionic Order. Classical Order of architecture, the second Greek and the third Roman. It is primarily
identified by its capital, with its rolled-up cushion-like form on either side creating the distinctive
volutes. The Ionic Order has a base of the Asiatic or Attic type (the latter being favoured by the Romans),
and the shaft is more slender in proportion than in the Doric Order: Greek shafts are almost invariably
fluted with fillets separating the flutes (although Hellenistic columns often have the lower part of the
shaft faceted or plain, as in the stoa, Priene (c.158156 bc)), but Roman shafts are often wholly
unfluted. The astragal, echinus, and fillet occur in both Greek and Roman capitals, the echinus is
enriched with egg-and-dart, and sometimes (e.g. Erechtheion, Athens) the astragal is embellished with
bead-and-reel. The particularly elegant and beautiful capitals of the Erechtheion (c.421407 bc) also
have a hypotrachelion enriched with a continuous frieze of anthemion motifs, while the astragal below
has bead-and-reel and the moulded abacus is ornamented with egg-and-dart. Indeed, abaci are always
moulded, much smaller than Doric abaci, and usually plain, but sometimes enriched. Entablatures
consist of architrave (usually divided into fasciae), frieze (sometimes omitted, particularly in Hellenistic
buildings), and cornice. The frieze has no metopes or triglyphs, so the inter-columniation discipline
inherent in Doric does not exist, and spacing can be wider. Furthermore, the Ionic frieze may be a plain
band, can be richly ornamented with continuous sculpture either in relief (as with Roman work), or as
applied in different coloured stone (e.g. Erechtheion), and may also be pulvinated (as in the thermae of
Diocletian, Rome). Cornice-mouldings can be very rich, with bed-mouldings including dentil-courses,
egg-and-dart, or other ornament, as in the temple of Fortuna Virilis, Rome (c.40 bc). Additional
mouldings of bead-and-reel occur between the architrave fasciae in richer versions of the Order. One of
the main problems when using the Ionic Order is the capital, with its two distinct elevationsone with
the two volutes (desirable on a front), and the side with the baluster side or pulvinus (not desirable on
a faade). In Greek temples, therefore, a special had to be designed so that two adjacent volutes would
appear on two faces at the external angle of a portico by pulling the corner volutes out with concave
curved faces at 45 (135 to each faade). This angle-capital also had two adjacent partial volutes at the
inner angle within the portico. This some-what clumsy arrangement was superseded by the Romans,
who invented a capital with four identical faces, the eight volutes projecting under the four corners of
the abacus thus doing away with the need for a special as all the capitals were the same on all four
sides. This angular capital (also known as the Scamozzi Order) was used at the temple of Saturn, Rome
(c.42 bc, rebuilt c. ad 320), and was the basis for the upper part of the Composite capital. See also

Ammonite.
 Ionic Order

"Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple."

Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture (III.1.1)

Having maintained the engines of war as a military architect for Julius Caesar, Vitruvius
dedicated De Architectura to Augustus, his heir, in hope that it would guide the emperor in the
rebuilding of Rome. Although the tenets expounded in this treatise, the only one of its kind to
survive, were largely ignored, they do preserve the principles of several dozen earlier Greek
architects, including Chersiphron and his son, the architects of the Temple of Artemis at
Ephesus, one of only four temples, which, by virtue of the "great excellence of and the wisdom
of their conception they owe their place of esteem in the ceremonial worship of the gods."

It is in Books III and IV that Vitruvius promulgates his aesthetic. Derived from Hermogenes, the
architect of the temple of Artemis at Magnesia, these rules on symmetry and proportion define
what he calls eustyle (from eu stylos, literally "good column"), an architectural ideal based on the
Ionic order as it was developed in Ionia on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor (Anatolia) in the
mid-sixth century BC. (In the fifth century, the order appears in Greece, itself, where the best
example is the Erechtheum on the Acropolis, below.)
Hermogenes
prescribed a
series of
proportional
relationships
for temple
colonnades
based on the
diameter of the
column as the
module or unit
of measure.
Ideally,
intercolumniati
on (the space
between the
columns)
should be two-
and-a-quarter
times the
thickness of
the column,
itself, and the
height of the
column nine-
and-a-half
times its
diameter. (A
column sixty-
four feet high,
such as
Didyma,
would be
almost seven
feet in
diameter and
stand
approximately
fifteen feet
apart.) Too,
more closely
spaced
columns
should be
taller and more
narrow than
those farther
apart. It is this
sense of ratios
and
relationships
that Vitruvius
has in mind
when he
admonishes
the reader to
remember that,
"in the
members of a
temple there
ought to be the
greatest
harmony in the
symmetrical
relations of the
different parts
to the general
magnitude of
the whole."
Changing one
element
requires that
others be
adjusted as
well.

Although it is
the spiral
scrolls or
volutes of the
capital that are
the distinctive
feature of the
Ionic order, it
is defined as
well by the
slender
proportion of
the column,
which has
twenty-four
flutes, and a
base (Doric
does not have
a base but rests
directly on the
strybolate).
The
entablature,
which is
illustrated
above, is
usually one-
quarter the
height of the
column and
has an
architrave or
epistyle
divided into
three bands or
fasciae, each
projecting
beyond the
other; a frieze,
which
sometimes was
decorated; and
a cornice with
block-like
dentils, in
imitation of
the supporting
beams of a
wooden
building.

Vitruvius presents a charming story about the origin of the Ionic order, taking the principle that,
as a man's foot was one-sixth his height, so a Doric column should be six times taller than its
diameter at the base.

"Just so afterwards, when they desired to construct a temple to Diana in a new style of beauty,
they translated these footprints into terms characteristic of the slenderness of women, and thus
first made a column the thickness of which was only one eighth of its height, so that it might
have a taller look. At the foot they substituted the base in place of a shoe; in the capital they
placed the volutes, hanging down at the right and left like curly ringlets, and ornamented its front
with cymatia and with festoons of fruit arranged in place of hair, while they brought the flutes
down the whole shaft, falling like the folds in the robes worn by matrons. Thus in the invention
of the two different kinds of columns, they borrowed manly beauty, naked and unadorned for the
one, and for the other the delicacy, adornment, and proportions characteristic of women.

It is true that posterity, having made progress in refinement and delicacy of feeling, and finding
pleasure in more slender proportions, has established seven diameters of the thickness as the
height of the Doric column, and nine as that of the Ionic. The Ionians, however, originated the
order which is therefore named Ionic."

De Architectura (IV.7-8)

The restored ionic capital above is from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

References: Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1960) translated by Morris Morgan
(Dover Books); Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture (2001) edited by Ingrid D. Rowland and
Thomas Noble Howe; Art in the Hellenistic Age (1986) by J. J. Pollitt. The illustration is taken
from History of Art (1995) by H. W. Janson.

500 BC, Greek architectural styles changed so that instead of building temples in the old Doric
style, people began to want their new temples for the gods to be built in the new Ionic style.
Ionic temples are a little fancier and more delicate than Doric temples, without being as elaborate
as Corinthian temples.

Here's a video made by a 13-year-old that does a good job of

explaining the difference between Doric and Ionic
DORIC IONIC CORINTHIAN PEDIMENT METOPE

In Ionic temples, the columns have a small base to stand on, instead of sitting right on the floor.
They are still fluted, but they have more flutes than Doric columns. At the top of the columns,
there's a double curve in stone, under the architrave (ARR-kuh-trayv). On the architrave, there is
a continuous frieze (FREEZE) where the triglyphs and metopes would be on a Doric temple.