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Fragment of the reinforcing rim, bowl and carved handle base of a large Roman vase
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Fragment of the reinforcing rim, bowl and carved handle base of a large Roman vase
Pentelic marble
Height: 18cm
Length: 29cm
Depth: 6cm
Length: 29cm
Depth: 6cm
Museum number: M536
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 267
On display: Colonnade - central aisle
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house.
For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit
Curatorial note
This fragment from the top of a vase is carved (beginning from the top) with ovolo, thin fillet, flattened cyma reversa in waterleaf design, and fillet above a smooth body. On the lower fillet and waterleaf at the right side there is a lotus-palmette in high relief. To the left, there are traces of the base and the start of a large handle which curved up and around from right to left below and above the lip. The lip was thickened with carved simulated drapery moulding from a point above the lotus-palmette and probably for a similar length on the other side of the other base of the same handle to create a pleasing, solid reinforcement for the heavy, carved handle. The whole motive was no doubt repeated on the opposite side of the vase.
The carving is of the same high quality as the best of the marble furniture fragments in Soane's collection, for example compare nos. M24 (Vermeule 232); M643 (Vermeule 233) and M38 (Vermeule 242).
The carving is of the same high quality as the best of the marble furniture fragments in Soane's collection, for example compare nos. M24 (Vermeule 232); M643 (Vermeule 233) and M38 (Vermeule 242).
Provenance
Rome; collected by Charles Heathcote Tatham for the architect Henry Holland during the 1790s. See Cornelius Vermeule, unpublished catalogue of the Antiquities at Sir John Soane's Museum, Introduction, transcription of Tatham letters, List 3, no. 12.
Literature
Tatham: Drawings, 8.
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