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Foliated terminal of a spiral shaft
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Foliated terminal of a spiral shaft
Pentelic marble
Height: 36cm
Width: 34cm
Thickness: 15cm
Width: 34cm
Thickness: 15cm
Museum number: M65
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 214
On display: Museum Corridor - outside the Picture Room
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house.
For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit
Curatorial note
From the overcurling acanthus foliate enrichment at the top of the shaft spring twin pine cones to which are attached superimposed pairs of foliate rosette buttons.
There is a very similar example in the Museo delle Terme, Rome, showing the top and the shaft sculptured as one. There is a further example of top only in the Leda Gallery of the Villa Torlonia-Albania1.
Many of these double pine cones, such as the collection assembled in the Terme, seem to be merely the decorative tops of the spiral fluted shafts, examples of which are grouped together following these terminal enrichments (Soane collection Vermeule catalogue nos. 217-219), others of the smaller variety may have been sockets for mounting lamps, just as the larger ones may have been support fixtures.
1 No. 184; restored as a 'candelabrum'. See, P. Arndt and W. Amleung, Photographische Einzelaufnahmen antiker Sculpturen, 4 vols, Munich, 1893-1912, XII, colour plate no. 83.
There is a very similar example in the Museo delle Terme, Rome, showing the top and the shaft sculptured as one. There is a further example of top only in the Leda Gallery of the Villa Torlonia-Albania1.
Many of these double pine cones, such as the collection assembled in the Terme, seem to be merely the decorative tops of the spiral fluted shafts, examples of which are grouped together following these terminal enrichments (Soane collection Vermeule catalogue nos. 217-219), others of the smaller variety may have been sockets for mounting lamps, just as the larger ones may have been support fixtures.
1 No. 184; restored as a 'candelabrum'. See, P. Arndt and W. Amleung, Photographische Einzelaufnahmen antiker Sculpturen, 4 vols, Munich, 1893-1912, XII, colour plate no. 83.
Provenance
Rome; collected in Rome by Charles Heathcote Tatham for the architect Henry Holland during the 1790s. See Cornelius Vermeule, unpublished catalogue of the Antiquities at Sir John Soane's Museum, Introduction, transcription of Tatham letters, List 1, no.1.
Literature
Tatham: Etchings, 4; Drawings, 5.
Description of Sir John Soane's Museum, 1930, fig. 19.
Description of Sir John Soane's Museum, 1930, fig. 19.
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