Tag Archives: architectural decoration

Cornici con doppio kyma ionico: il passaggio da Augusto ai Flavi attraverso l’esempio del portico davanti al Macellum di Pompei

Author: E. Pullano

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The paper begins with the analysis of the entablature of the portico in front of the Macellum in the forum of Pompeii, focusing on a specific decorative sequence in the sub-cornice characterized by the repetition of the Ionic kyma below and above the dentils. The Pompeian portico, one of the few Julio-Claudian architectural complexes preserved within a clearly legible context, provides a significant reference point for investigating the diffusion and adaptation of decorative models of urban origin beyond Rome. From this starting example, the study reconstructs the origins of the motif in Asia Minor and identifies its first systematic adoption in Roman architecture in the Forum of Augustus, understood as a moment of codification and reorganization of the model within a coherent and replicable syntax. Within this framework, the Macellum represents an intermediate case between the Augustan definition and the subsequent transformations of the 1st cent. AD, documenting, in a “provincial” context, the transfer and adaptation of decorative sequences in spaces connected with the dissemination of Imperial propaganda. A survey of the known contexts allows us to trace its diffusion – particularly widespread in Rome and Italy during the Julio-Claudian period, as an indicator of the circulation of models adaptable to different buildings and functions – and its development up to the Flavian period, when the scheme was progressively integrated into fixed proportional grids and associated with a more serial production of architectural members, and beyond into the Late Imperial period. The examined cases also highlight the differences between Eastern and Western traditions in the conception of architectural articulation and in construction processes, and show how the repeated use of a technical-decorative motif responds not only to formal needs but also participates in an ongoing process of resemanticization of architectural language within civic spaces of the Empire.

Il tempio periptero di Eraclea Minoa. Una rilettura dei dati

Author: L. Fuduli
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The extensive research conducted over several decades at the site of Heraclea Minoa, which began in the mid-20th century, has revealed significant portions of the city, including a peripteral temple – currently a rare find in Hellenistic Sicily – as well as fragments of Doric architectural decoration, initially associated with the temple at the time of discovery. This reinterpretation of the data aims to provide insights into the phases of the city’s monumentalization within the broader context of Hellenistic Sicily.

L’estetica del tempio greco prima degli ordini architettonici

Author: A. Pierattini

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With only a few exceptions, the scholarship on Greek architecture has addressed the aesthetic of pre Archaic architecture only to a limited extent and often with the purpose of tracing the origins of Doric and Ionic forms and conventions that are documented later, beginning in the second half of the 7th century. Taking a different perspective, this article addresses the aesthetic of pre Archaic Greek architecture in its own context. It focuses on sacred buildings, which beginning at the end of the 8th century B.C. started to differentiate themselves from other buildings for their conspicuous size as well as for their decoration. The chronological scope of this article includes the 8th century B.C., when the evidence of sacred architecture increases dramatically in the Greek world, and the first half of the 7th, when the first experiments with cut stone and terracotta construction began to transform the appearance of the temple. Based on a review of the archaeological evidence, the article examines the treatment of architectural surfaces, the aesthetic importance of wooden columns and the roof, and the radical impact of terracotta roof tiles on the aesthetic of the temple.