ARCHITECTURAL ORDERS. - The system of load-bearing architectural elements (column and capital) and carried elements (entablature), which already appears in Assyrian, Egyptian, and other pre-Hellenic architectures, is defined by Greek art with particular forms and proportions in the principal members and in their parts, thus characterizing the various orders; above all the capital is the determining element. The fundamental orders are the Doric and the Ionic, which took shape simultaneously between the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.: from them the others derive.
A first definition, together with legendary accounts on their origin, is given by Vitruvius; the orders were then codified by the treatise writers of the sixteenth century: Serlio, Vignola, Palladio, Scamozzi; and in the neoclassical age particularly by Milizia. Among these treatise writers there is no complete agreement on the proportions and the relationships of the elements of each order, which are established according to the particular sensibility of the author and the monuments examined.
The Doric order is the one that most emphasizes the constructive function of the members; the shaft of the column (which in its most archaic form rises directly from the ground) has a height of about 8 diameters, and is incised by flutes with a sharp edge (from 16 to 24 at first, then in the classical age 20); the capital is simply constituted by an echinus and an abacus; in the frieze of the entablature metopes (slabs smooth or adorned with bas-reliefs, generally figured) and triglyphs (slabs adorned with vertical flutes that perhaps preserve the memory of wooden supporting elements) alternate. A variation of this order, with a column with a smooth shaft and an architrave without a frieze, is called Tuscan or Tuscanic because it is held to be characteristic of the Etruscan age.
More slender is the Ionic order, in which the column has a height, first of 8 then of about 9 diameters, and has the shaft with flutes with a blunted angle; the capital is characterized by two volutes; the entablature is characterized by an architrave divided into various bands and by a frieze, smooth, or storied with continuous decoration.
From the Ionic order the Corinthian develops, which differs from it by a greater slenderness (the height of the column is about 10 diameters) and above all by the greater elegance of the capital, decorated with a double ring of acanthus leaves. From this the composite order differs only in the form of the capital, which superimposes on the acanthus the volutes of the Ionic order and is also adorned with figured elements.
One must also recall the so-called figured order (or also, according to Milizia, caryatic or Persian), in which human figures replace the columns in the supporting function; but the name of order is in this case improper, inasmuch as its proportions escape every rule.
The Christian architecture of the early times sometimes makes systematic use of the orders, as in the interior of St. John of Florence or of the Lateran Baptistery (Corinthian); in St. Mary Major in Rome a long row of Ionic columns, reworked during the eighteenth century, supports an entablature adorned with mosaics. But soon, with the use of spolia materials, the elements that define the orders are confused, as in St. Salvatore of Spoleto, where Corinthian columns support a Doric entablature; then throughout the Middle Ages the arch definitively prevails over the entablature, which reappears in the Romanesque age in Latium, where the tradition was more alive and the classical examples more numerous: in the colonnades of St. Mary in Trastevere or in the Cosmatesque porticoes of certain churches Ionic capitals are used, ancient or carefully imitated, over which runs an unadorned entablature or one decorated with mosaic, in imitation of that of St. Mary Major. This attempt at a classical revival is, however, entirely sporadic.
Only in the fifteenth century, with the passionate study of antiquity, does the use of the orders return and establish itself ever more stably, until it becomes a fundamental compositional element of European architecture. The proportions and the forms escape preestablished canons; classical modes are reflected, at times intimately relived but at times transformed by the personality of the architect or by new aesthetic tendencies; often the order is defined only by the type of the capital, itself capriciously varied in its decoration.
The first expressions appear in Tuscany with Brunelleschi, who adopts the Corinthian in the exterior and interior of the Pazzi Chapel and in the old sacristy of St. Lawrence; and, with a more solemn classical sense, with Leon Battista Alberti in the Malatesta temple of Rimini (in the the unfinished facade is an early example of the superimposition of orders), in S. Maria Novella in Florence and in S. Andrea in Mantua; the same Alberti codifies the return to the norm implemented by the Romans of the subsequent superimposition of the orders (from bottom to top Doric, Ionic and Corinthian) in the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence. Outside Florence this use is not yet clearly defined, as appears in the arch of Alfonso of Aragon in Naples where, despite the lively classical inspiration, the Ionic order is superimposed on the Corinthian. In numerous churches of the second half of the 15th century a single order is used (mostly Corinthian) in the two zones of the facade, with different proportions and with projections so flat as to express only a division of spaces (S. Maria del Popolo and S. Agostino in Rome; the cathedral of Turin; S. Francesco in Ferrara; S. Pietro in Modena; etc.); on the other hand, in Alberti's facade of S. Marco in Rome the superimposed orders are expressed with a clear functional value and with a classical sense of proportions.
At the beginning of the new century, Bramante with the tempietto of S. Pietro in Montorio makes use of the pure Doric order with a perfect correspondence of forms and rhythm between exterior and interior. A similar unity of composition is achieved by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder in S. Biagio in Montepulciano, where likewise the Doric order is the dominant motif.
The most frequent scheme in the facades of 16th-century churches is that of two superimposed orders, not according to the classical Albertian conception, but following instead the prototype of S. Spirito in Sassia, that is, with the use of the Corinthian in both zones. There is no lack of exceptions to this arrangement, with the adoption in the lower zone of the Doric order (S. Giacomo in Augusta in Rome; S. Paolo in Milan); or Ionic (S. Maria dell'Orto in Rome; S. Giorgio in Bologna; Scuola di S. Fantin in Venice); or finally superimposing Doric and Ionic (Annunziata of Parma; S. Giuliano of Venice; S. Sebastiano of Milan). But in the project for the facade of S. Pietro, Michelangelo adopts the single order (Corinthian), which extends into the sides and the tribune, returns in the dome, dominates in the interior, with perfect unity among all the parts. Palladio too arrives at the same conception of a single order in the facades (repeated in the interior), drawing direct inspiration from the ancient temples; supreme examples are the Redentore and S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The single order continues in the Baroque age, generally with scant plastic sense (S. Francesca Romana, SS. Pietro e Marcellino, S. Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome; S. Firenze in Florence; S. Maria di Carignano in Genoa), at times instead achieving vivid pictorial effects through the power of the projections, as in S. Giovanni in Laterano, and especially in Venice, where the Palladian tradition persists (S. Maria della Salute); it is fairly frequent at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, as well suited to Neoclassical canons (S. Rocco in Rome; S. Francesco di Paola in Naples; S. Carlo in Milan; the Gesuati in Venice). The use of three orders in façades, entirely exceptional at the beginning of the sixteenth century (S. Bernardino dell'Aquila and the cathedral of Enna, both with the superposition, according to the classical rules, of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian), reappears frequently in the eighteenth century in Sicily; but with the repetition of the Corinthian alone (S. Giorgio di Modica; S. Giorgio di Ragusa, etc.).
The orders of the façade often continue into the bell tower, especially when the latter is inserted into the architectural scheme or forms a single body with the front; generally the three superposed orders are adopted according to the classical rules (S. Biagio di Montepulciano; S. Atanasio dei Greci in Rome; the Annunziata of Airola near Avellino; S. Prospero of Reggio Emilia, unfinished).
The use of the order in the drum of domes, already hinted at by Bramante in Lombardy and then adopted by him in the project for St. Peter's, has a grand application in the Michelangelesque dome, from which other Roman domes would take their model (S. Carlo al Corso, S. Carlo ai Catinari, S. Andrea della Valle) and those of other regions (the Salute of Venice; the Madonna della Ghiara of Reggio Emilia; S. Sebastiano of Acireale, etc.).
The orders are adopted — independently of the architectural motif of the church — not only in accessory spaces such as sacristies, but also in chapels, whether they are constructions added as separate entities (among the earliest examples is the Raphaelesque Chigi chapel in S. Maria del Popolo), or whether they arose with a unified conception: thus it happens in the majority of seventeenth-century chapels (a typical example is S. Andrea della Valle in Rome, where in each chapel the order is applied with different characteristics).
Also in the various furnishings of churches — altars, ciboria, tabernacles, pulpits, lavabos (v. under the individual entries), frames of altarpieces — and in sepulchral monuments, the orders are used from the Renaissance onward, reflecting the successive forms of the major architecture.
As for the so-called figured order, a first expression can be traced back to Michelangelo's project for the tomb of Julius II. This invention was well received by the Mannerists, who would adopt it in civil architecture, and especially in villas or in decorative elements. In church façades a first limited application is found in S. Maria di S. Celso in Milan, by Alessi; more complete examples are in S. Raffaele in Milan, and, in the Baroque age, in the Ospedaletto of Venice and in the national church of Trapani. Among the applications in interiors, that of the oratory of S. Zita in Palermo is notable. A rare example of a figured order in bell towers is the Borrominian one of S. Andrea delle Fratte in Rome. - See plate XIV.
