CAPITELLO. - It is the architectural element that serves to connect a support, whether column or pier, with the architrave or the impost planes of an arch. The form of the capital varies according to architectural styles and periods. In the architecture of the Greeks and Romans the capital assumed forms and proportions determined in relation to the other elements of the architecture (v. ORDINI ARCHITETTONICI). The builders of Early Christian buildings, both basilical and baptisterial, used capitals entirely similar to those of contemporary pagan buildings. From the 4th century onward, symbols of the Christian faith were also inserted into the decoration of capitals.
In the first half of the 5th century, that type of capital which Strzygowski called Theodosian was particularly in vogue, because it appeared for the first time and was then much used under the reign of Theodosius II (408-50). It is a capital of the composite type adorned with a double row of eight leaves of thick and spiny acanthus, whose tips, somewhat tapered relative to the base, curve strongly. The leaves of the lower row are arranged in the intervals of those of the upper row, on four of which rest the volutes of the capital. Instead of a series of egg-and-dart motifs, the capital is surrounded at the top by many small leaflets, generally five-lobed, which sometimes bear a small cross carved on one of them, as can be seen, for example, in some capitals of the church of St. Demetrius in Thessalonica. Created for the first time in the workshops of Constantinople, this type of capital spread very soon in Greece and the other regions of the East and also reached Italy: it is found in fact in the churches of Parenzo, Venice and Ravenna. There are two examples also in Rome in the capitals reused in the tomb of Cardinal Venerio in S. Clemente.
In the Byzantine capital, which had its greatest development in the 6th century in the Justinianic age, the work of the chisel is almost completely replaced by that of the drill. The capitals that assume the geometric scheme of a truncated pyramid or cone have their faces covered with a minute web of interlace, so that a chiaroscuro effect is produced that makes the capital seem to have been worked in openwork. Often the interlace, more or less dense, is similar to that of a wicker basket or to an unfolding of leaves and tendrils, which not rarely spring, as can be seen in S. Vitale in Ravenna, from a central vase placed at the base of each face of the capital. Vine and acanthus leaves find in these capitals the most varied treatment, and it is not infrequent that they are arranged so as to highlight at the center of the face a circle or a square or a rectangle containing a cross or, as is often found in the churches of Ravenna, some monogram.
In the Byzantine age the pulvinus above is carved from the same block, so that it forms a single piece with the capital: this new form has been given the name of capital-impost. The pulvinus too is often covered with interlace, which spreads over its faces like embroidery, or is adorned with symbolic or various decorative motifs.
Theriomorphic or figured decoration appears in the capitals of the Romanesque age.
Bibliography3 works
Paris-Brussels 1930, pp. 96-110. On the capital from the 4th to the 7th century: R. Kautzsch, Kapitellstudien. Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des spätantiken Kapitells im Osten vom vierten bis ins siebente Jahrhundert, Berlin-Leipzig 1936.
Giuseppe Bovini