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  • image SM volume 115/80

Reference number

SM volume 115/80

Purpose

Folio 47 verso (Ashby 80): Doric cornice once near the Theatre of Marcellus

Aspect

Cross section, with measurements, and axonometric raking view of front

Scale

To an approximate scale of 1:16

Inscribed

[Drawing] [covered by mount) REPERTA. APVD. ANPHITEATYRV[M]. SAVELLORVM. (‘Discovered near the amphitheatre of the Savelli’); [measurements]
[Mount] 80 [x2]

Signed and dated

  • c.1513/14
    Datable to c.1513/14

Medium and dimensions

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown over stylus lines; on laid paper (233x167mm), thin paper at top left, rounded corners left, inlaid
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (223x161mm)

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Watermark

See recto

Notes

This drawing shows a Doric cornice identical in its sequence of mouldings to that of the so-called Basilica Aemilia (Fol. 46r/Ashby 77). Ashby (1904) proposed that it may have originally come from that very building, but it is smaller in size, measuring 79 minutes rather than 93 minutes in height, and it was ‘discovered’ near to the Theatre of Marcellus, the ‘Amphitheatre of the Savelli’ mentioned in the caption (written in pseudo-antique capitals, which is far from the Basilica Aemilia’s site in the Roman Forum. The drawing was positioned in the original compilation to face one of a Doric entablature with a very similar cornice designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (Fol. 48v/Ashby 82), although the more obvious source for the Sangallo entablature would be the Basilica Aemilia itself. There is certainly space on the page to insert a frieze and architrave, but this was not done.

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 43
Census, ID 44824

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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