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Italy: Venice: Madonna dell'Orto. Design for an altarpiece on canvas at Madonna dell'Orto that probably depicts the death and apotheosis of the Virgin, with an elaborate frame of coupled columns supporting shell cartouches and angels, with a Latin cross between them.
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Reference number
Adam vol.56/42
Purpose
Italy: Venice: Madonna dell'Orto. Design for an altarpiece on canvas at Madonna dell'Orto that probably depicts the death and apotheosis of the Virgin, with an elaborate frame of coupled columns supporting shell cartouches and angels, with a Latin cross between them.
Aspect
Perspective
Inscribed
Inscribed and dated in ink in capitals Disegno Del Sepolcro Fatto Nella Chiesa Della Madonna SS Dell Hort/i Anno M.DCCI; below in ink in a contemporary hand Nel tempo che ora Gu--ano (?) -e Sig Michele Cardani; and in pencil 1701./Cardano/ Sepolcro temporary; and in red ink on both drawing and album leaf 42.lettered in the drawing INRI, andin one cartouche FACTVS OBEDIENS ? VSQUE AD MORTEM; and in the lower cartouche MORTEM MORIENDO DEXTRUXIT
Signed and dated
- Undated
Medium and dimensions
Pen, brown wash on buff paper; 2 pieces of paper laid on to a later sheet that has been trimmed to size of drawing515 x 315, 3 corners of drawing trimmed diagonally
Hand
Unidentified eighteenth-century artist
Notes
The Venetian Gothic church of the Madonna dell'Orto is distinguished by its paintings by Tintoretto, Bellini and Cima, and this altarpiece design was probably for a minor side-chapel. No record has been found of an L. Cardano or Cardocco as a painter or architect. The building was radically restored in 1864 and again in 1930/31, and the altarpiece shown here may have disappeared at one or other of these dates (see Ashley Clarke The Church of the Madonna dell'Orto (London, 1977), p.14). This rather battered drawing may have been acquired by accident, as part of a lot rather than by design, during Robert Adam's period in Venice in 1757.The missing corners and presence of a backing sheet trimmed to the size of the drawing suggest at least two previous locations for the drawing.
Level
Drawing
Exhibition history
The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009
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