Solomonic column

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Solomonic columns applied with gilded vines in Poland

The Solomonic column (salomónica), also called Barley-sugar column, is a helical column, characterized by a spiraling twisting shaft like a corkscrew. It may have a Roman Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian capital, or a fanciful variant. The idea of "Solomonic" columns springs from biblical descriptions of the two columns, "Boaz and Jachin", which famously flanked the entrance to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. What those columns actually looked like largely depends on the cultural context and imagination of the one who is working up a "restoration", from hints in the Books of Chronicles and Kings.

The twisted column is an eastern motif taken into Byzantine architecture and decoration. Twist-fluted columns were a feature of some eastern architecture of Late Antiquity.

Solomonic columns and other fanciful variants in the cloister of St John Lateran, Rome, early 13th century

From Byzantine examples, the Solomonic column passed to Western Romanesque architecture. In Romanesque architecture some columns also featured spiraling elements twisted round each other like hawser. Such variety adding life to an arcade is combined with Cosmatesque spiralling inlays in the cloister of St John Lateran (illustrated, left). These arcades were prominent in Rome and may have influenced the baroque Solomonic column reinvented by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which features more dramatic twisting.

In Rome, the Solomonic column has a long traditional history. In the 4th century, Constantine the Great is reputed to have brought to Rome columns from the Second Temple, destroyed in 70 CE, for reuse in the high altar and presbytery of the original St Peter's Basilica. The tradition of their origin was transferred from the Second Temple to the First Temple of Solomon, built in the 10th century BCE [1].

If the columns really were from one of the temples in Jerusalem, the spiral pattern may have represented the oak tree which was the first Ark of the Covenant, mentioned in Joshua 24:26 [2]. These columns have sections of twist-fluting alternating with wide bands of foliated reliefs. In the 16th century Raphael depicted these columns in his tapestry cartoon The Healing of the Lame at the Beautiful Gate. Later Peter Paul Rubens used them in tapestry designs, ca 1626 [3]. Both artists provided a variant of an Ionic capital for the columns.

[edit] Baroque Solomonic columns

Bernini's baldacchino in St. Peters

The Solomonic column was revived as a feature of Baroque architecture. New bronze Solomonic columns were used in Bernini's baldacchino over the high altar of St. Peter's. The construction of the baldacchino, which was finished in 1633, required that the ones from Constantine be moved.

During the succeeding century, Solomonic columns were commonly used in altars, furniture, and other parts of design. Sculpted vines were sometimes carved into the spiralling cavetto of the twisting columns, or made of metal, such as gilt bronze. In an ecclesiastical context such ornament may be read as symbolic of the wine used in the Eucharist.

The columns became popular in Catholic Europe including southern Germany. The Solomonic column spread to Spain at about the same time as Bernini was making his new columns, and from Spain to Spanish colonies in the Americas, where it was often used in churches as an indispensable element of the Churrigueresque style. The design was most infrequently used in Britain, the south porch of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, being the only exterior example found by Robert Durman (Durman 2002), and was still rare in English interior design, an example noted by Durman in the funerary monument for Helena, Lady Gorges (died 1635) at Salisbury perhaps the sole use.

After 1660, such twist-turned columns became a familiar feature in the legs of French, Dutch and English furniture, and on the glazed doors that protected the dials of late 17th- and early 18th-century bracket and longcase clocks. English collectors and dealers sometimes call these twist-turned members "barleysugar twists".

[edit] Reference

Durman, Richard, 2002. "Spiral Columns in Salisbury Cathedral." Ecclesiology Today. Journal of the Ecclesiological Society. Issue 29, September 2002. PDF of the magazine article on Solomonic columns.