The development of the three classical styles of ancient Greek architecture - Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian - is lost in the darkness of centuries. Of these three special ways of building, the Corinthian style is the most decorative and best known in modern times. It developed on the basis of the Doric and Ionic types of architectural composition (orders), which is determined by a combination of proportions in the construction of the column and certain details of its decoration. It got its name from the ancient Greek city of Corinth, but was most likely developed in Athens in the fifth century BC. The most famous example of the use of style, preserved to this day, can be found in the temple dedicated to Apollon Epicurean, located in the north-eastern part of the Messiah (in Ancient Greece, part of Arcadia), in Bass.
But it is curious that the Corinthian order is not part of the temple, which had a Doric colonnade around and an ionic order in Celle. Zella is the walled space inside the temple where the image of the deity was placed. The place, which was a sanctuary (gieron), where the deity lived. And only one Corinthian column is inside the cella. A mysterious feature that causes discussions between archaeologists and historians. Some scholars claim that she is an example of an offering to a deity. The same picture could be observed in the temples of ancient Greece, built over the next century. A well-known example, when the Corinthian order was used as part of the temple, this is a type of choregic monument, a colonnade (of six columns) of the monument of Lysicrates in Athens, erected in 334 BC.
According to a beautiful legend about the origin of the column told by Vitruvius, the ancient Greek master of bronze casting, Callimachus, once walked in the vicinity of Corinth and came across a grave hill in which one girl rested. On it was a wicker basket of willow with gifts in the form of toys, covered with a stove top. Large acanthus leaves - plants around the grave, sprouted through the bars and formed something similar to a bouquet. Kallimaha was very impressed with this motive. When he returned home, he sketched it and then embodied it in bronze capitals - in the shape of a round basket surrounded by acanthus leaves. How plausible this story is, it is unknown, but the fact is that the first samples were really made of bronze, only later the Corinthian order was embodied in stone.
In ancient Greece, it was perceived only as a more decorative form of the ionic. It should be said that the Greeks extremely rarely used it in the construction of temples and after the fifth century BC. He received more development from the Romans, moreover, developed several of its options. It's a little surprising that the Romans, who were called more practical people, especially in relation to the ancient Greeks, chose the most luxurious of the Greek warrants. In any case, together with the Doric and Ionic, it is considered one of the three classical orders.
Repeating many features of the ionic column, the Corinthian order has pronounced differences. On the barrel of the column (similar to the barrel in the Ionic style), flutes alternate (flat, deep), often ending under the capital in the form of curved petals. Two types of columns differ in the profile of the base (in Corinthian it expands and becomes thinner), but especially in the capital. The capital in the form of an open cup of flower, which is surrounded by arranged flowers. In the lower part of the cup, a narrow belt covers, and in the upper part, stems rise, abutting against a quadrangular plate decorated in the middle with a flower. On the plate lies an entablature, the frieze of which is covered with stucco decorations (palmettes and other figures), repeating also above the cornice, broken into brackets from the bottom.
It should be noted that you can find more distant predecessors of such decorative complexity, for example, in ancient Persian architecture. Although, of course, the naturalistic acanthus leaves are a sure sign that we have a Corinthian order, the construction and detailed processing of the columns also played a large role in the spacious halls, which the Persians loved very much. The trunks of the columns were covered with small flutes, they were installed on beautifully decorated bases in the form of an overturned bowl, and they ended in bunches of vertically placed volutes or half-figures of bulls (unicorns) carved from stone.