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  • image SM volume 115/138a
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Reference number

SM volume 115/138a

Purpose

Drawing 1 (top row, left): Unidentified Corinthian capital

Aspect

Perspectival view

Scale

Not known

Signed and dated

  • c.1515
    Datable to c.1515

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink over black chalk with single vertical stylus line at centre

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Notes

This Corinthian capital has three acanthus leaves at the bottom with two elongated leaves rising at the sides to form corner volutes, the space between them adorned with four tendrils culminating in florets. No other drawing of this capital is known. In its manner of presentation, the drawing has much in common with certain depictions, as Ashby noted, by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini, that are probably considerably earlier in date. Its frontal format and less precise draughtsmanship also suggest that it was executed slightly later (c.1515) than other drawings in the codex.


OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fols 10v–11r (Hülsen 1910, pp. 19–21; Borsi 1985, pp. 87–91)

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 68
Census, ID 46976

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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