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Drawing 6 (bottom centre): Unidentified Corinthian capital with horned animal heads and mask
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Reference number
SM volume 115/139f
Purpose
Drawing 6 (bottom centre): Unidentified Corinthian capital with horned animal heads and mask
Aspect
Perspectival view of half
Scale
Not known
Signed and dated
- c.1515
Datable to c.1515
Medium and dimensions
Pen and ink over traces of black chalk
Hand
Bernardo della Volpaia
Notes
This Corinthian-type capital has scrolling volutes at the sides terminating in horned animal heads (one shown), and in place of the customary floret a head with what are perhaps wings rising above it that are tied together at the top. Ashby suspected that the design, which is not recorded in any other known drawing, was modern, although this does not have to be the case. The drawing differs from three others on the page in showing the capital’s left rather than right half, and in being executed in darker ink, which suggests it was added subsequently. It does, however, employ the convention of hatching an area outside the confines of the design, which makes it like Drawings 2 and 5 but distinguishes it from the others in the codex produced at a rather earlier time.
Literature
Ashby 1904, pp. 68–69
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