COLUMN. - It is a load-bearing element of circular section, generally in marble or stone, with a base and capital connected to others of the same kind by entablature or arcades; it is intended to resist the vertical action of the elements above (see also ARCHITECTURAL ORDERS). It may also be used in isolation or attached to walls and piers with primarily decorative functions. The architects of the earliest Christian basilicas made very extensive use of it to divide the large space of the church into multiple naves.
Notable in this period are the columns that were spolia from the ancient basilica of St Peter, intended for the enclosure of the iconostasis, or those adorned with foliage in the choir of St Praxedes. The columns of Eastern provenance from the ciborium of St Mark, with their figural representations arranged in superimposed rings, derive from the type of figured Roman column. Also noteworthy at the beginning of the 6th century are the columns covered with ornamentation from the ciborium of Presbyter Mercurius in the church of St Clement. During the early Middle Ages, columns of spolia were used almost everywhere, and it was only in the Romanesque period that columns acquired new and unusual proportional relationships. Later, at the dawn of the Gothic, the column often takes on the appearance of a twisted shaft with three or more elements, and the twists often follow different directions within the same column, which is divided by horizontal pauses into different sections. At that time, especially in Rome and southern Italy, the shafts were often veined with mosaic. The twisted column disappears in the Renaissance, when the rigidity of the classical orders is restored. In the transition to the Baroque, the column undergoes some freer interpretations of proportion; Bernini, in the baldachin of St Peter’s, draws inspiration from those spolia but gives the motif new coherence; Borromini also uses columnar caryatids; Fuga takes inspiration from the metal foliage of those in the tabernacle of St Mary Major. Bernini’s innovation in particular had a wide resonance even in painted perspectives (Frascati, Gesù). With Neoclassicism, the rigid ancient norm of proportions was restored, and 19th-century architecture made extensive use of the column, until the introduction of new building materials, especially iron and reinforced concrete, completely altered the original relationships between this element and the other architectural components.
BIBL.:
G. Matthiae, *Arte del Medioevo in Italia*.