Plain column shaft

Plain column shaft, fully preserved and carved in a single block of “Bigio antico” marble with wavy lines and stains of white over a dark grey background, as the quality of “Bigio antico” here used is the pebbly one, which has white stains, streaks and wavy lines standing out against the background in great contrast. The surface of the shaft has been repolished and its ends have been reworked. The summit of the shaft is carved with an astragal (h. 2.5 cm, projecting 2 cm), a flat fillet (h. 1.5 cm) and a thin cavetto (h. 1 cm, projecting 0.6 cm), while the bottom end is cut with a cavetto (h. 0,5 cm) and a flat fillet (h. 3 cm, projecting 0.7 cm). On the top surface there is a hole (h. 7 cm, w. 9 cm, d. 4 cm) for a fastening dowel.

The shaft is placed over a not pertaining, modern base of the XIX century.

It is difficult to set our piece in a precise chronological frame, since “Bigio antico” marble was widely employed throughout antiquity and was very often used, probably because of its low cost, in private contexts for both revetment panels and medium-scale columns.