The dark honey-colored stone of this Ionic mausoleum makes it different from the majority of gleaming white classical mausoleums in the cemetery, and more like a natural part of the landscape. Otherwise there is nothing extraordinary about it: it is a gentleman’s mausoleum, and a gentleman would not dress ostentatiously.
We also have some summer pictures of the Clark mausoleum.
A classic Ionic temple with rusticated walls.
A fine temple of the “modern Ionic” order (Ionic columns with the volutes at the four corners) with a large statue of Christ standing above the pediment. It has not escaped festooning with artificial flowers.
A Renaissance idea of a classical temple, with columns in the “modern Ionic” style—that is, with the volutes on the corners of the capitals. The rusticated stone of the walls makes a pleasing contrast with the smooth columns, doorframe, and pediment.
Perhaps Dan Brown could recommend a Harvard symbologist to unravel the strands of symbolism here. Christ (holding a bouquet of artificial flowers, because he stood still too long in a Catholic cemetery) is stepping down from a ruined Ionic temple, his left hand seeming to gesture toward the ruins behind him, as if he has something to tell us about them. We could say that the ruined temple represents shattered and broken paganism, and Christ shows the way forward. Or perhaps, in spite of the Greek style, the ruins represent the Temple in Jerusalem, where not one stone was left upon another, and Christ emerges fresh from that ancient tradition, stepping forward to bring the real Temple to us.
