Inscribed
Inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Palazzo Spada; in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand Cellini
Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Pen, brown and yellow washes
281 x 210
Hand
Unidentified eighteenth-century hand or possibly Franceso Salviati
Verso
Outline pen sketch of a landscape with trees and classical ruins; the composition is typical of the capricci by Robert Adam and Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820).
Notes
This is a companion drawing to that of a similar vase from the Palazzo Spada in Adam vol.26/42. 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.26/42. Apart from the Spada identification, the vase would seem to be early sixteenth-century rather than antique. This drawing and Adam vol.26/42 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
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