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Drawing 4 (second row, centre): Richly ornamented vase with gryphons’ heads
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Reference number
SM volume 115/146d
Purpose
Drawing 4 (second row, centre): Richly ornamented vase with gryphons’ heads
Aspect
Perspectival view
Scale
Not known
Signed and dated
- c.1515
Datable to c.1515
Medium and dimensions
Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over black chalk and a single vertical stylus line at centre
Hand
Bernardo della Volpaia
Notes
The vase is richly decorated with gadrooning and has a horned mask applied to the lower part of the bowl, acanthus scrolls adorning a band around its middle, and, towards the top, a pair of protruding gryphons’ heads emerging from acanthus bodies and serving as handles, and, finally, a gadrooned lid with a finial. Unlike others depicted on this page, it is not imaginary but real, being also known from an early drawing by Battista Brunelleschi, together with two others by Amico Aspertini that state it was in the house of an ‘Andrea Cavallo’ or, alternatively, an ‘Andrea Scarpellino’. The cursorily sketched base in the Coner drawing is not shown at all in the Battista Brunelleschi drawing, which suggests that the two may be distantly related. Otherwise, the Coner drawing’s precise, exacting and heavily-worked character distinguishes it from those on the rest on this page, and it may have been executed before these others were haphazardly added around it. It is, nevertheless, stylistically consistent with many further drawings dating from the second phase of the codex’s completion.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Battista Brunelleschi] Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, A. 78.1 (Brunelleschi Sketchbook) fol. 19v; [Amico Aspertini] Schloss Wolfegg, Codex Wolfegg, fols 18v and 44v (Schweikhart 1986, pp. 81 and 104)
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Battista Brunelleschi] Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, A. 78.1 (Brunelleschi Sketchbook) fol. 19v; [Amico Aspertini] Schloss Wolfegg, Codex Wolfegg, fols 18v and 44v (Schweikhart 1986, pp. 81 and 104)
Literature
Ashby 1904, p. 71
Census, ID 47039
Census, ID 47039
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