Page:Ware - The American Vignola, 1920.djvu/33

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THE COMPOSITE ORDER PLATES XII AND XIII
23

These dimensions apply to Palladio's entablature where it is made of the same size as Vignola's, that is to say, a quarter of the height of the column, or two Diameters and a half. But Palladio himself made his Composite entablature only two Diameters high, or one-fifth of the length of the column, cutting down the Frieze to half a Diameter, the Architrave to two-thirds, and the Cornice tb five-sixths. If the dimensions of Palladio's Cornice given in the table are, accordingly, taken from the upper diameter of the shaft instead of from the lower, they will exactly conform to Palladio's own usage.

The Block entablature used by Scamozzi for his Composite Order is even less than two Diameters in height, and this seems to have been the case also with the entablature of the Olympiaeum at Athens, which Palladio is thought to have imitated.

The moldings below the Blocks are often made to project more than in Palladio's example. This increases their distance apart, on centers, since one must still come over the axis of the column and the one on the corner must be as far out as the end of these moldings. The Blocks also vary considerably in length in different examples.

The upper part of the Composite Capital, as has been said was used alone by Scamozzi and others as a variety of the Ionic Capital, Fig. 74.

The Composite Capital is employed in the Arch of Titus in Rome, and elsewhere, with a Corinthian entablature, and the Block Cornice occurs in the so-called frontispiece of Nero, as well as in the temple at Athens, in connection with a Corinthian Capital.