Ionic Capital

A print of an Ionic capital — the scrolled, double-volute crown that defines the Ionic order, one of the three canonical orders of Greek architecture alongside the older Doric and the later, more ornate Corinthian. The Ionic developed in the Greek colonies of western Asia Minor (ancient Ionia, on the coast of modern Turkey) during the 6th century BC.

The capital sits at the top of a fluted column and carries the weight of the entablature above. Its most distinctive feature is the pair of spiralling volutes on either face, often read as a stylised ram's horn or as the unfolding of a scroll. Ionic columns are slimmer and taller in proportion than Doric, with a base — the Doric has none — and were used by the Greeks for buildings that wanted to read as graceful rather than massive: the Erechtheion on the Athenian Acropolis, the Temple of Athena Nike, the Artemision at Ephesus.

The Romans inherited all three Greek orders and systematised them — Vitruvius codified Ionic proportions in the 1st century BC, and the Renaissance theorists went back to him for their own revival of the canon. In print, the carved curl of the volute reads as pure geometric line.