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  • image SM volume 115/138f
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Reference number

SM volume 115/138f

Purpose

Drawing 6 (third row, left): Unidentified fantastical capital with sea serpents

Aspect

Perspectival view of half

Scale

Not known

Signed and dated

  • c.1515
    Datable to c.1515

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink over black chalk

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Notes

The capital has two levels divided by a rope moulding, with acanthus at the bottom and sea serpents (one shown) at the top to either side of a mask. The same capital was recorded in a probably related drawing by the anonymous draughtsman responsible for the Codex Strozzi, who also supplied a profile. The Coner drawing was later copied by Michelangelo.

The drawing is close in character to others on this sheet, and different from other drawings of capitals in the codex, which again suggests a slightly later date of execution.

RELATED IMAGES: [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, Codex Strozzi, 1601 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 27); [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 1Av: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 49; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 90–91)

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 68
Census, ID 46988

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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