Eastern Corinthian column capital

Corinthian column capital with two crowns of acanthus spinosus leaves of Eastern type. The leaves are articulated in five lobes divided by deep and narrow voids of triangular, elongated and oblique shape. Over the lobes’ points run either a central incision, which grants them a v-shaped profile, or a deep drilled groove that stands as a remnant of the leaf’s creased pattern; a pair of grooves underlines also the upper part of the midrib, which is slightly tapered towards the bottom. In the first crown the leaves have a curved tip with the central point folded over, while in the second crown the completely cling onto the surface of the kalathos. By touching one another, the leaves of the first crown create a series of three geometrical shapes. At the sides of the central folia spring the caulicoli which here have become a very thin and flat shaft with a roughly square section, and which are decidedly undersized in proportion to the calyx leaves that they are bearing; the latter are compressed under the abacus with an almost horizontal arrangement. Helices and volutes, by now a thin strip contiguous to the abacus, appear to be wholly atrophied and seem to have lost all structural meaning. If the form of the acanthus leaves is common to many Corinthian capitals carved in Asia Minor in the course of the second half of the III century AD, on the contrary the shape of the caulicoli and their structure are typical of artefacts produced in the provinces of Syria, Palestina and Arabia in the early IV century AD. Caulicoli of the same form as ours, with extremely thin shafts and horizontal calyxes pushed under the abacus, can be found on a capital of Constantinian age now in the Church of St. Anne in Jerusalem as well as on several examples from the ancient Sergiopolis, modern Resafa in Syria. As a further testimony to the hypothesis that our capital may come from this geographical area stands also the kind of material employed, a compact limestone of yellow-reddish colour, a type of stone carved in the south-eastern part of the Mediterranean basin.