Unknown

In Sta Prassede (‘In Santa Prassede’); 7 [in graphite]

• 1625/35
  Date range: 1625/35

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash (left half) and pink-brown wash (right half) over black chalk and stylus lines; on laid paper (232x167mm), rounded corners at left, inlaid
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (223x160mm)

Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist) and Seventeenth-Century Hand 2 (Sangallo Copyist 2)

See recto

This drawing was added to the compilation before it was dismembered in the 1630s and transformed into an album. It was produced in two stages by the two different draughtsmen employed to make additions to the original compilation, the left half by one of them and the right half by the other. It is difficult to determine which was executed first. The number ‘7’ written in graphite refers to the planning of the additional drawings.

Now lost, this pedestal-like object had, at its base, two sphinxes seated on a plinth, which supported a central zone where two female figures are dressing a door with garlands that was capped by frieze of griffins and mini-candelabra and then a feature that looks rather like an extended Ionic capital with rams’ heads at the centres of the scrolls. The ‘capital’ was then topped with another decorative band of baluster forms, double balusters alternating with cross-shaped configurations (possibly not of antique origin; Campbell 2004). The base was also recorded in the sixteenth century in drawings by Giovannantonio Dosio and Étienne Duperac, which provide views as well of one of the other sides, which was adorned with foliate decoration. The original function of the object is open to debate. Campbell considered it to be an altar on the basis of its similarity with other ancient altars but noted that its concave sides were unusual. Alternatively, it could conceivably have been a base for a candelabrum, a type of object that often has concave sides.

Although the annotation specifies that the base was in Rome in the church of Santa Prassede, it had already been moved by the time this drawing was made (c.1630). This is clear from a caption on the Dosio drawing, which states that it had formerly been in Santa Prassede and was now ‘in the house of Messer Tommaso de Cavalieri’ (Fu già in Sta Presedia, oggi in casa di M. Thomaso de Cavalierj), and so had already been moved before the middle of the sixteenth century. The Coner drawing was a copy, therefore, of an earlier depiction made before it was removed from the church. Whatever became of the base, it was featured much later in a lavish publication by Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine (Percier–Fontaine 1798, pl. 86).

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, BNC, N.A. 618 (Dosio Sketchbook), fol. 33v (Tedeschi Grisanti 1983, p. 92); [Étienne Duperac] Louvre, CdD, inv. 26458 (Guiffrey–Marcel 1907–75, 5, p. 76)

Ashby 1904, p. 39
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 619–20
Census, ID 44785

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

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