Pavilion II: Angular Capitals

Capitals are generally made in the angles of colonades and portico's of this order, with volutæ not only in front, but alʃo in the part which, if the capital was made as uʃual, would be the flank; by which means they have the fronts on two ʃides, and are called angular capitals. -- Andrea Palladio, First Book of Architecture, Chap. XVI

Thomas Jefferson modeled the front of Pavilion II on the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, now known as the Temple of Portunus, in Rome. The center two columns have traditional Ionic capitals; the two end columns have what Palladio called the Ionic capital with “two fronts,” or angular capitals. The outside corner volutes protrude at a 45° angle, and volutes are visible on the two adjacent outer sides. The other two sides show the baluster. To accommodate the expectation of seeing a volute corresponding to the end of the scroll on the adjacent side, these two balusters are shortened slightly so that half of the adjacent volute is visible. When viewing the capital from inside the portico, the goal is for the two half volutes to look like a single inverted volute.

Angular capitals typically appear on corner columns where there is at least one column on each side of the corner column (see the side view of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis from Palladio above), as opposed to single-column depth. Viewed from a distance, the eye will interpret the inverted volute as a regular volute, so the viewer sees a continuous line of volutes along the columns as the colonnade turns at a right angle. Palladio used this style for the corner columns in the courtyard of the Palazzo Barbaran da Porto, now home of the Palladio Museum in Vicenza, Italy.

We used photogrammetry to analyze the Pavilion II angular capital. We took pictures with a digital camera mounted to a pole and then compiled the images in Metashape. We used Geomagic to clean up the data and produce a 3D model.