Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/70

The General Principles op Form. 55 described in its proper place. The true Persian base, that which was employed in the better class of buildings, is the campaniform or bell-shaped reversed, with its salient torus and rich rin^ of leaves (Fig. 12). Nothing of the kind appears in Egyp^ at least in that situation. Calathi- form or bell-shaped capitals are indeed met with ; but in order to identify the Persian base with the capital of the Delta, we must suppose that the Persian architect who borrowed it turned it upside down. This hypothesis is so very unlikely that we shall not stop to discuss it Then, too, the capital, whether in plan or compo- sition, has naught to remind us of the models proper to Egypt It is constructed on a rectangular plan ; whereas its Egyptian counterpart, no matter its shape, may be described as always con- ceived on a square plan. The form which character- izes the Persian capital, some- times put direct on the shaft, sometimes allied thereto by a profusion of ornaments, consists of a pair of semi- bulls, back to back, who appear under the entabla- ture without an intermediary member (Figs. 31, 32). In always interposes between architrave. Another way of testing the independence of Persian architec- ture, as against Egyptian models, is to look at the very peculiar arrangement of its corona, whose projection beyond the shaft is far Fig. tf.— Column at Puargadae. DiEVLAfOV, L'Ari amtigtUt ton. i. Fig. a8. Egypt, on the contrary, an abacus the body of the capital and the