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Reference number

SM volume 115/70

Purpose

Folio 42 verso (Ashby 70): Well head in the cloister of San Pietro in Vincoli

Aspect

Orthogonal profile, with measurements

Scale

To an approximate scale of 1:8

Inscribed

[Mount] 70 [x2]

Signed and dated

  • c.1513/14
    Datable to c.1513/14

Medium and dimensions

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink over stylus lines; on laid paper (232x166mm), rounded corners at left, inlaid
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (223x157mm)

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Watermark

See recto

Notes

As Gustavo Giovannoni suggested to Ashby (Ashby 1913), this drawing shows the profile of the octagonal well-head in the cloister of Rome’s San Pietro in Vincoli, the sequence of mouldings and the dimensions corresponding exactly. According to Vasari, in his ‘Life’ of Simona Mosca, it was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who ‘employed [Simone] Mosca to adorn it with some beautiful masks’ (Dopo, il medesimo Sangallo, che facea condurre nel chiostro di San Piero in Vincola la bocca di quel pozzo, fece fare al Mosca le sponde con alcuni mascheroni bellissimi; Vasari–Milanesi 1878–85, 6, p. 299). Designed in 1512/13 (see Marchini 1964) and certainly before the death of Pope Julius II (February 1513) whose arms its bears, it was probably carved at around the time the codex was being produced. Its depiction in the codex, therefore, may well have been based on one of Sangallo’s project drawings. The well-head’s patron was Julius II’s cousin, Leonardo Grosso della Rovere (1464–1520), who had become the titular cardinal of the church in 1508.

The inclusion in the codex of this work by Antonio da Sangallo is not surprising given that Bernardo della Volpaia was part of Sangallo’s équipe and that he also made Coner drawings of four other designs by Sangallo (Fols 48v/Ashby 82, 67r/Ashby 115 and 68r/Ashby 116 Drawings 5 and 9). The well-head is of an innovative design recalling large antique vases, and, indeed, its huge ‘handles’, not shown in the drawing but belonging to the well-head as executed, make it resemble such ancient vases as the stone example once in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore (Fol. 85v/Ashby 143).

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 40
Ashby 1913, pp. 204–05
Günther 1988, p. 337

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Codex Coner has been made possible through the generosity of the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, Berlin

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.


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