Browse
Reference number
Purpose
Aspect
Scale
Inscribed
Signed and dated
- c.1513/14
Datable to c.1513/14
Medium and dimensions
Hand
Notes
The capital was closely based on an ancient prototype of which two examples survive, one in Santa Prisca where it is used as a baptismal font and another formerly in the Capitoline Museum where it was once located under the statue of a barbarian prisoner (Hülsen 1910, p. 25) but now in the Antiquarium Comunale di Roma (inv. 870; Burns 1984, p. 415). A capital of this same design was drawn by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini, giving the location as Santa Maria Maggiore, while a similar drawing by Antonio Labacco suggests that it may have been part of the church’s portico (questo chapitello e to[n]do e a santa maria maggiore sotto auno porticho i[n] terra; Lanzarini–Martinis 2015, pp. 150–51). Its resemblance to the modern example from the Palazzo della Cancelleria indicates that architects of the time were being inspired by this elaborate form of Doric. A further variant was used for the design used for the garden loggia of Raphael’s Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence (c.1515), the construction of which was initially overseen by Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo (Pagliara 1984).
The drawing was adjusted during execution, being originally set out with stylus lines so that the raking view receded less steeply, but this was corrected perhaps so as to be more consistent with the drawings above it. Also adjusted was the curvature of the echinus, which was made to protrude less far. The drawing’s format was altered to a frontal depiction in a copy by Michelangelo.
RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] London, BM, 1859-6-25-560/1v (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, pp. 47–48; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 94–95)
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 11v (Hülsen 1910, p. 21; Borsi 1985, p. 91); [Antonio Labacco] Rome, BAV, Codice Rossiano 618, fol. 27r (Census, ID 10165339)
OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 32r/Ashby 51; Fol. 41v/Ashby 68; Fol. 49r/Ashby 83; Fol. 83r/Ashby 136
Literature
Ashby 1913, p. 209
Level
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.
Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).