Update
Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: null; date: 18 February 2025

Impost Capital

Source:
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
Author(s):
William LoerkeWilliam Loerke

Impost Capital, 

a uniquely Byz. capital created possibly in Constantinople by merging the function of the impost block with the mid-5th-C. forms of the Corinthian capital. The merger was facilitated by the development of the Corinthian capital into cup- and kettle-shaped forms, covered with abstract floral ornament incised and drilled, rather than carved, into the block; in both shape and decoration this late Corinthian capital approached the form of the more geometrically conceived impost block. Some impost capitals show a much diminished impost block on top; some exhibit small volutes at the base or at the top, faint reminders of the Ionic capital. The stages in this development from the mid-5th C. to its climax in Justinian I's Hagia Sophia have been traced by Strube (infra). The creation of the impost capital marks the end of the classic capital and the appearance of a new form that carries the eye more fluently from column shaft to the arches above.

Bibliography

C. Strube, Polyeuktoskirche und Hagia Sophia (Munich 1984) 102–10, figs. 62–65, 80–88, 95–98.Find this resource:

M. van Lohuizen-Mulder, Early Christian Lotus-panel Capitals and other so-called Impost Capitals, BABesch 62 (1987) 131–52.Find this resource:

William Loerke