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Record drawing of a candelabrum base, or possibly an altar, showing a dancing female figure in relief flanked by two sphinxes standing on rams' heads; above is a frieze of satyrs' heads and grotesque masks.
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Reference number
Adam vol.26/175
Purpose
Record drawing of a candelabrum base, or possibly an altar, showing a dancing female figure in relief flanked by two sphinxes standing on rams' heads; above is a frieze of satyrs' heads and grotesque masks.
Aspect
Elevation
Signed and dated
- Undated
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, pen
385 x 299
Hand
Unidentified eighteenth-century artist
Watermark
Villandry (?)
Notes
The tripod candelabrum base can probably be identified with one of two from the first-century bases originally found at Tivoli, Italy, but which in the eighteenth century were conserved in the Piazza San Marco in Venice (see P. Bober & R. Rubenstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, Oxford, 1986, p.122). The figure here is that described by Bober as 'a maenad wearing a long garment and nebris; her dance is a rapid stomp with head cast back in rapture and arms flung wide holding the ends of a mantle that passes behind her' (Bober & Rubinstein, op. cit., p.121). The drawing is probably a copy, and it may be compared with drawings of similar bases in Adam vol.26/65 and 173.
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