Bucranium, plural bucrania (Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 βουκράνιον), is the word for the skull

Skull

The skull is a bony structure in the head of many animals that supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.The skull is composed of two parts: the cranium and the mandible. A skull without a mandible is only a cranium. Animals that have skulls are called craniates...

 of an ox. It is also an architectural term used to describe a common form of carved decoration in Classical architecture

Classical architecture

Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...

, used to fill the metope

Metope (architecture)

In classical architecture, a metope is a rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze, which is a decorative band of alternating triglyphs and metopes above the architrave of a building of the Doric order...

s between the triglyph

Triglyph

Triglyph is an architectural term for the vertically channeled tablets of the Doric frieze, so called because of the angular channels in them, two perfect and one divided, the two chamfered angles or hemiglyphs being reckoned as one. The square recessed spaces between the triglyphs on a Doric...

s of the frieze

Frieze

thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...

 of Doric temples

Doric order

The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...

. A bas-relief or painted decor consisting of a series of ox-skulls draped or decorated with garlands of fruit or flowers was a Roman motif drawn from marble altars, which have survived in some number; the motif was also later used on Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 and Neoclassical

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...

 buildings. It is generally considered to be a reference to the practice of garlanding sacrificial oxen, the heads of which were primitively displayed on the walls of the temples, a practice with a long history reaching back to the sophisticated Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 site of Çatalhöyük

Çatalhöyük

Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BCE to 5700 BCE...

 in eastern Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

, where cattle skulls were overlaid with white plaster.

A rich and festive Doric order was employed for the Basilica Aemilia

Basilica Aemilia

The Basilica Aemilia was a civil basilica in the Roman forum, in Rome, Italy. Today only the plan and some rebuilt elements can be seen. The Basilica was 100 meters long and about 30 meters wide...

 on the Forum Romanum at Rome; enough of it was standing for Giuliano da Sangallo

Giuliano da Sangallo

Giuliano da Sangallo was an Italian sculptor, architect and military engineer active during the Italian Renaissance.He was born in Florence. His father Francesco Giamberti was a woodworker and architect, much employed by Cosimo de Medici, and his brother Antonio da Sangallo the Elder and nephew...

 to make a drawing, c 1520, reconstructing the facade (Codex Vaticano Barberiniano Latino 4424); the alternation of the shallow libation dishes called patera

Patera

A patera was a broad, shallow dish used for drinking, primarily in a ritual context such as a libation. These paterae were often used in Rome....

e with bucrania in the metopes reinforce the solemn sacrificial theme.With time, during the sixteenth century, the connection with sacrifices faded and bucrania became part of a decorative vocabulary that evoked "Roman-ness".

In serious, visually literate contexts, the presence of bucrania always signifies that the Doric order is the organizing principle, but in a first-century fresco from Boscoreale

Boscoreale

Boscoreale is a comune and town in the province of Naples, Campania, located in the Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio under the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, known for the fruit and vineyards of Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio...

, protected by the eruption of Vesuvius and now at the Metropolitan Museum, bucrania and cistae mysticae

Cista

A cista in the classical world was generally a casket, used for example to hold unguents or jewels. More specifically, in the Mystery cult, a cista mystica is a basket or chest used to house snakes. Cistae mysticae were used in the initiation ceremony of the cult of Bacchus, or Dionysus, as well...

 hang on ribbons from pegs that support garlands, evoking joyous fasti

Fasti

In ancient Rome, the fasti were chronological or calendar-based lists, or other diachronic records or plans of official and religiously sanctioned events...

.

Garlanded bucrania provide a repetitive motif in the plasterwork of the fine 18th century Staircase Hall of The Vyne (National Trust, Hampshire) and at Laycock Abbey (National Trust, Wiltshire).

Further reading

• George Hersey, 1988. The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture: Speculations on Ornament from Vitruvius to Venturi, (MIT Press) Chapter 2: "Architecture and Sacrifice"