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Folio 85 verso (Ashby 143): Large porphyry vase seen in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore
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Reference number
SM volume 115/143
Purpose
Folio 85 verso (Ashby 143): Large porphyry vase seen in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore
Aspect
Perspectival view, with measurements
Scale
To an approximate scale of 1:16
Inscribed
[Drawing] 15 [early seventeenth-century hand]; Inplatea. S. m./ maiere (‘In Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore’)
[Mount] 143 [x2]
Signed and dated
- c.1515
Datable to c.1515
Medium and dimensions
[Drawing] Pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk and a single vertical stylus line at centre; on laid paper (232x164mm), rounded corners at right, inlaid (back to front with respect to original foliation)
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (226x157mm)
Hand
Bernardo della Volpaia
Watermark
See recto
Notes
According to the caption, the vase once stood in Rome’s Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore. As Ashby noted, it was seen by Giovanni Rucellai who recorded it in his scrapbook: ‘item on the piazza in front of the main door a porphyry vase made in a single piece, fashioned in the shape of a cup [and resting] on colonettes. Its diameter is about four to five braccia’ (item, fuori, sulla piaza dirimpetto alla porta di mezo, uno vaso di porfido d’uno pezzo, ritratto a modo di taza in su colonnette, che il diamitro suo può essere braccia 4 in 5; Perosa, 1, 1960, p. 70). Later drawn by Sallustio Peruzzi, when it was still in the piazza, the vase is now lost, having presumably been removed when the church was refashioned in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The drawing depicts the vase from below to give an enhanced impression of size and monumentality, showing the handles as if slightly from the right to indicate their thickness. It is placed at the bottom of the page in the expectation, presumably, of other drawings being added above it. its style, with its extensive use of hatching, accords with that of others from the slightly later campaign of work, but the handwriting of the caption is consistent with that of all others in the codex from the sixteenth century, indicating that the draughtsman was Bernardo della Volpaia.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Sallustio Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 447 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 125)
The drawing depicts the vase from below to give an enhanced impression of size and monumentality, showing the handles as if slightly from the right to indicate their thickness. It is placed at the bottom of the page in the expectation, presumably, of other drawings being added above it. its style, with its extensive use of hatching, accords with that of others from the slightly later campaign of work, but the handwriting of the caption is consistent with that of all others in the codex from the sixteenth century, indicating that the draughtsman was Bernardo della Volpaia.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Sallustio Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 447 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 125)
Literature
Ashby 1904, p. 70
Census, ID 46902
Census, ID 46902
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