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Folio 71 verso (Ashby 121): Doric capital once in Santa Sabina
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Reference number
SM volume 115/121
Purpose
Folio 71 verso (Ashby 121): Doric capital once in Santa Sabina
Aspect
Half a cross section and raking view of side, with measurements
Scale
To an approximate scale of 1:12
Inscribed
[Drawing] .a. S. sauina. (‘At Santa Sabina’); totius. m. 62 (‘The whole [width is] 62 minutes’); [measurements]
[Mount] 121 [x2]
Signed and dated
- c.1513/14
Datable to c.1513/14
Medium and dimensions
[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks; on laid paper (232x165mm), rounded corners at left, inlaid
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (224x160mm)
Hand
Bernardo della Volpaia
Watermark
See recto
Notes
The richly ornamented Doric capital shown here has an abacus with a cyma reversa carrying Lesbian ornament and with rosettes on its underside, an egg-and-dart echinus, a bead-and-reel astragal, and a neck of S-shaped profile with foliate ornament. It cannot now be traced, but It is described in the caption as being at Santa Sabina on Rome’s Aventine Hill, and in a drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi as being used as a base at the church’s entrance (serve per basa a l entrata di s[an]c[t]a sabina). This may well explain why in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini the capital, again identified as being at Santa Sabina, is drawn upside down. There is some disagreement in the drawings about the capital’s precise design. In Giuliano da Sangallo’s, the neck is shown not as S-shaped but as concave, while it is straight in Peruzzi‘s but with an apophyge at the top.
The Coner drawing’s half-sectional format (which shows an invented dowel hole) tallies with that of most of the drawings on the recto. Its positioning in a top corner of the sheet implies that further drawings were anticipated.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 15 (Hülsen 1910, p. 26; Borsi 1985, pp. 106–07); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 486 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 49–50; Wurm 1984, pl. 439)
The Coner drawing’s half-sectional format (which shows an invented dowel hole) tallies with that of most of the drawings on the recto. Its positioning in a top corner of the sheet implies that further drawings were anticipated.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 15 (Hülsen 1910, p. 26; Borsi 1985, pp. 106–07); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 486 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 49–50; Wurm 1984, pl. 439)
Literature
Ashby 1904, pp. 60–61
Census, ID 45888
Census, ID 45888
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