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  • image SM volume 115/148c
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Reference number

SM volume 115/148c

Purpose

Drawing 3 (left column, third from top): Ionic capital possibly one in Santi Apostoli

Aspect

Perspectival view, with measurements

Scale

To an approximate scale of 1:11

Inscribed

[Measurements]

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

This Ionic capital has a tall neck decorated with anthemion, and it is shown from the side in the drawing below it (Drawing 4). A very similar capital appears in a slightly earlier drawing in the Codex Strozzi, which is likewise paired with a side view, and is accompanied by an annotation giving its location as Santi Apostoli, and it could well be that it is the same capital and that the drawings are related. Other early drawings (see Viscogliosi 2000, p. 156) include depictions by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder and an anonymous draughtsman (this again with a side view) which give the same location but show the abacus with an ornamented cyma. Among surviving ancient examples of this particular type is one in the Museo Gregoriano Profano of the Vatican Museums (Viscogliosi 2000, ibid.).

The drawing is very similar in style and format to others on this sheet and like them it probably dates from around 1515 (see Cat. Drawing 1). It was copied by Michelangelo.

RELATED IMAGES: [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, Codex Strozzi, 1598 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 28); [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 1Ar: left side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 49; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 92–93)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Antonio da Sangallo the Elder] Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, Vol. B, fol. 192r (Brunetti–Todros 1990, p. 19); [Anon.] Florence, BNC, inv. II.I.429, fol. 14r (Günther 1988, p. 335)

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 71
Census, ID 47047

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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