Orders of Architecture , Index to Plates

Description

Preface to the Orders of Architecture
My interest in undertaking this collection of watercolors dates back to January 1991, when I conceived the idea of preparing a series of renderings that would compare certain historical architectural elements, specifically, capitals, columns/shafts, entablatures, bases, as expressed in the architecture of ancient civilizations, i.e. Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, Persia, China, Turkey, etc. The fact that my architectural education at Carnegie Institute of Technology in the early thirties included a year, sophomore, of studying Analytiques (simple design problems requiring the use of the classical Orders of Architecture of Greece and Rome, principally Doric, Ionic, Corinthian), suggested a starting point. I soon decided to illustrate all five orders, adding Composite and Tuscan. To turn back the clock sixty years and render in the Beaux-Arts technique elevations of the orders, as I had rendered Analytiques portraying three-dimensionality by varying gradaions of light/shade/shadow, and casting the sunlight at a 45 degree angle, was a challenging and fun experience. The fifteen Plates and Frontispiece are rendered in Winsor & Newton Artists' Water Colour, Payne's Gray pigment, on 300 lb. D'Arches cold press watercolor paper. The Frontispiece, which I designed, is a fictional composition using Greek and Roman art and architectural artifacts.
The Orders of Architecture are the heart and soul of all classical architecture. They are essentially a proportional system. The word "order" refers to an upright column or support including the base and capital, and horizontal entablature or part supported. It was Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect and engineer who lived in the 1st century B.C., during the Augustan Age, who first promulgated the rules of the Classical orders by establishing standards of proportions. Other systems were developed by Leone Battista Alberti (1404-1472), Italian painter, poet, philosopher, musician, and architect, Andrea Palladio (1508-1550), Italian architect, and Italian architects S. Serlio and Vicenzo Schmozzi. In 1562, Italian architect Giacoma Barozzi da Vignola (1507-1562), published the very influential "Five Orders of Architecture," which has generally been accepted as the standard. As to their chronology, the Greek orders were developed between the 8th and the 2nd centuries B.C.; the Roman orders were developed between the 2nd century B.C. and the 4th century A.D.
Beginning in the 15th century many of the principles of the Orders of Architecture were revived and incorporated in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish Renaissance architecture; in the United States the revival occurred in the Colonial or Georgian Period, and in the Neoclassic or Greek Revival style. "The American Vignola—Part 1," by Professor William R. Ware, published in 1902, was a standard textbook for students attending architecture schools in the United States. The portfolio "The Orders of Columns (Vignola)," by J. Buehlmann, architect and Professor at Munich, published in the 19th century, was a major resource in proceeding with this exhibition.
Written by Herbert W. Johe, 1993.