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  • image M801

Fragment of the bottom of a decorative support for a Roman chair or small table

Pentelic marble

Height: 9cm
Width (base): 18cm, maximum
Length (bottom of base): 14cm

Museum number: M801

Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 249help-vermeule-catalogue-number

On display: Dome Area
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

This pair of clawed feet or paws, set together on a heavy base, are probably from a piece of furniture supported by decorative sphinxes or lion-griffins such as the monumental "Bacchic" chair in the Louvre, composed from various antique fragments1.

1 P. Gusman, L' Art décoratif de Roma de la fin de la république au IV siécle, 2 vols, Paris, 1910, II, pl. 76.

Provenance help-art-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 See Cornelius Vermeule, unpublished Catalogue of the Antiquities at Sir John Soane's Museum, Introduction, transcription of Tatham letters, List 2, no. 54. (Soane Archive).

Literature

Tatham: Etchings, 12; Drawings, 2.


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