Geison
The geison ( ancient Greek τό γεῖσον geîson , plural geisa ), also called corona (Latin for 'wreath, crown'), is the protruding cornice of Greek and Roman architecture, which is located on the eaves of ancient representative buildings above the frieze or the tooth cut .
The geison accompanying the gable slope, the so-called verge , is also called the oblique geison . The geison is crowned by the sima , the eaves molding of ancient buildings.
The geisa of the different building codes are designed differently. A distinction is made between Doric Geison , Ionian Geison and Console Geison , to name just the basic ones . The console geison is from the middle of the 1st century BC. Firmly connected with the Corinthian order .
While the Ionic geison is just a simple, downwardly drawn hanging plate and has no other decorations, the Doric geison is firmly integrated into the overall concept of the Doric temple and takes up its rhythm. On the underside of the Doric geison are plates, the mutuli (singular: mutulus ), which were made from the second half of the 6th century BC. With three rows of six drops, the guttae , are decorated. In the early 6th century the formation of the mutulus plates varied greatly. In particular, there were solutions with alternating wide and narrow mutuli, the latter then also having a reduced number of guttae. There were plates with 3 × 3 guttae, or two-row forms with, for example, alternating 2 × 3 and 2 × 5 guttae, for example at the Poro temple of Aphaia on Aegina . The space between the mutuli is called the "via". The mutuli take up the rhythm of the triglyph frieze by placing a mutulus plate over a metope and a triglyph . With an alternating mutulus width, the narrow plate is always placed above the metope.
In the 2nd century BC The Ionic geison undergoes various changes that led to the development of the console geison. First the undersides of the geisa were decorated, for example with rhombic or meander reliefs. Pergamon , Rhodes and Alexandria were the centers here which took the step towards the full development of plate-decorated Ionic geisa. These panels, quite comparable to the Mutuli of the Doric Geison, became carriers of ornaments and profiles and were further developed into consoles of the most varied of forms. From the early 1st century BC This new console geison was mainly integrated into the entablature of Corinthian buildings, the canonical part of which it was to become from the Augustan period . Richly decorated with profiles and festoons on the mostly curved consoles, adorned with relief fields or cassettes between the consoles, it formed the crowning glory of Roman representational architecture.
literature
- Henner von Hesberg : Konsolengeisa of the Hellenism and the early imperial period (= communications of the German Archaeological Institute, Roman Department . Supplement 24). Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1980, ISBN 3-8053-0469-2 .