An Ionic Column

Ionic Column ~ Left click on foto to enlarge it

Small replica (7.5" tall) of an original Ionic column

Hellenistic Greek, circa 300 B.C.

The model column pictured in the foto above (and referred to in the text below) was given to me as a Christmas Gift by my grandson Brian Starkey. What I truly admire about Brian is his emerging eclecticism, a trait I would like to believe he has derived from me. He procured this fascinating object, made of crushed marble, from the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In classical architecture, a column consists of a shaft, which usually rests on a base and is surmounted by an enlarged section known as a capital. The capital forms a visual and structural transition between the vertical shaft and the horizontal wall masonry, the entablature, under the roof. Columns placed in a line form a colonnade.

The Greeks developed three distinctive, carefully proportioned styles of columns ~ the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. The Ionic column, which is more tapered than the Doric, rises from a richly molded circular base. The Romans added two types of columns to these, the Tuscan, an unfluted modification of the Doric, and the Composite, which had the Ionic shaft and a more ornate Corinthian capital.

The capital, base and portions of the shaft of an Ionic column, now in the Museum's collection, come from a monumental Temple constructed at Sardis, the capital of Lydia in Asia Minor (now Turkey). Construction began about 300 B.C., with the final phase of construction taking place in 150 A.D. (The Parthenon in Athens, has Doric columns).

The temple at Sardis, dedicated to Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt and of the Moon, ranks among the seven largest of all Greek Temples. The original column would have risen to a height of 56 ft. and was part of one of two similar pairs of columns that would have stood in the East and West porches of the Temple.

The shortened form of the column, now in the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art, allows the viewer to appreciate the fine carving of the foliate ornaments on the capital as well as the fish-scale pattern on the torus molding at its base.