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Italy: Rome, Palazzo Spada. Record drawing of a vase on a square base with elaborate spout, heavily decorated in high relief showing figures hammering on an anvil; the handle is supported by a ram's head, balanced by a classical helmet.
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Reference number
Adam vol.26/42
Purpose
Italy: Rome, Palazzo Spada. Record drawing of a vase on a square base with elaborate spout, heavily decorated in high relief showing figures hammering on an anvil; the handle is supported by a ram's head, balanced by a classical helmet.
Aspect
Perspective
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Palazzo Spada; in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand Cellini
Signed and dated
- Undated
Medium and dimensions
Pen, brown and yellow washes
279 x 211
Hand
Unidentified eighteenth-century artist, possibly Francesco Salviati
Notes
This is a companion drawing to that of a similar vase from the Palazzo Spada in Adam vol.26/43. In his 1762 list of 'Good Antiquitys to be procur'd at Rome' (National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, Clerk of Penicuik Collection, GD18/4954), James Adam included those of the Palazzo Spada. From that collection, he singled out a 'Basorelievo' and a colossal statue of Pompey, but made no mention of either this vase or that in Adam vol.26/43. Apart from the Spada identification, the vase would seem to be early sixteenth-century rather than antique. This drawing and Adam vol.26/43 are similar to those attributed to Francesco Salviati (1510-63) (see P. Ward-Jackson, Victoria and Albert Museum, Italian Drawings, 2 vols., London, 1979, vol.I, pp.139-142). There is another example of this sort in Adam vol.56/162, and a later collection of vase designs, possibly by Giuseppe Manocchi (c.1731-82), in Adam vol.19/90-97. There is also a series of vase studies in sixteenth-century style by Manocchi in album five of the Hardwick drawings in the RIBA (see 5/12-15; see J. Lever, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, L-N, London, 1973).
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk