Editing Ionic order (section)

===Capital===
[[File: Capiteles de la fachada este del Erecteón, Atenas, Grecia, 2019 06.jpg |thumb|left|Ionic capital at the [[Erechtheum]] ([[Athens]]), 5th century BC]]
The major features of the Ionic order are the [[volute]]s of its [[capital (architecture)|capital]], which have been the subject of much theoretical and practical discourse, based on a brief and obscure passage in [[Vitruvius]].<ref>[http://www.nexusjournal.com/AndGal.html "Geometric Methods of the 1500s for Laying Out the Ionic Volute"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051228085023/http://www.nexusjournal.com/AndGal.html |date=2005-12-28 }} Denise Andrey and Mirko Galli, ''Nexus Network Journal'', vol. 6 no. 2 (Autumn 2004), pp. 31–48. DOI 10.1007/s00004-004-0017-4.</ref> The only tools required to design these features were a straight-edge, a right angle, string (to establish half-lengths) and a compass. Below the volutes, the Ionic column may have a wide collar or banding separating the capital from the [[Fluting (architecture)|fluted]] shaft (as in, for example, the [[Neoclassical architecture|neoclassical]] mansion [[Castle Coole]]), or a swag of fruit and flowers may swing from the clefts or "neck" formed by the volutes.

Originally, the volutes lay in a single plane (''illustration at right''); then it was seen that they could be angled out on the corners. This feature of the Ionic order made it more pliant and satisfactory than the Doric to critical eyes in the 4th century BC: angling the volutes on the corner columns ensured that they "read" equally when seen from either front or side facade. However, some classical artists viewed this as unsatisfactory, feeling that the placement of Ionic columns at building corners required a distortion at the expense of the capital's structural logic; the [[Corinthian order]] would solve this by reading equally well from all angles.<ref>{{cite book |last1=De la Croix |first1=Horst |last2=Tansey |first2=Richard G. |last3=Kirkpatrick |first3=Diane |title=Gardner's Art Through the Ages |date=1991 |publisher=Thomson/Wadsworth |isbn=0-15-503769-2 |edition=9th |page=[https://archive.org/details/gardnersartthrou00gard/page/170 170] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/gardnersartthrou00gard/page/170 }}</ref> The 16th-century Renaissance architect and theorist [[Vincenzo Scamozzi]] designed a version of such a perfectly four-sided Ionic capital that it became standard; when a Greek Ionic order was eventually reintroduced in the later 18th century [[Greek Revival]], it conveyed an air of archaic freshness and primitive, perhaps even republican, vitality.<ref><!--a citation for this commonplace statement was specifically requested-->A brief and accessible sketch of this familiar aspect of the Greek Revival "idea of primitivism, of searching back to the true, untainted sources of architectural beauty" (p. 38) and of the [[Utopia]]n aspects of [[Claude Nicolas Ledoux|Ledoux]] is briskly treated in Sir [[John Summerson]],  ''[[The Classical Language of Architecture]]'' (MIT Press) 1963; in discussions of American Greek Revival, the republic connotations of the Greek orders present an inescapable commonplace: "The Greek Revival style arose out of a young nation's desire to identify with the ideals of the ancient Greek Republic." ([http://www.rchsonline.org/ar_greek2.htm (Rensselaer County Historical Society) "Architectural Styles in Rensselaer County" (New York] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070923003635/http://www.rchsonline.org/ar_greek2.htm |date=2007-09-23 }}); "Greece, the world's first democracy, seemed an appropriate philosophical reference point for a self-confident new republic."  ([http://www.oldhousejournal.com/magazine/2003/february/greek_revival.shtml (Old-House Journal), James C. Massey and Shirley Maxwell, "Greek Revival in America: From Tara to farmhouse temples."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071214031111/http://www.oldhousejournal.com/magazine/2003/february/greek_revival.shtml |date=2007-12-14 }}) are typical statements, selected almost at random from texts accessible on-line.</ref>