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Shaft of a small Roman candelabrum
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Shaft of a small Roman candelabrum
Pentelic marble
Height: 43cm
Diameter: 10cm, maximum
Circumference: 29cm
Diameter: 10cm, maximum
Circumference: 29cm
Museum number: X28
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 194
On display: Museum Corridor - outside the Picture Room
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 shaft is carved with two layers of vegetable leaf sheathing, banded and separated by an overlapping section above the middle; the areas above each contain foliage and fruit or buds: that at the top, small apple-type fruit and leaves; at the bottom, leaves and buds of a plant, perhaps of the solanum family.
A complete illustrative example of this type of 'vegetable' shaft, found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome, appears in Jones1. See also the lower section of a candelabrum in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek2.
1 The British School at Rome, Catalogue of ancient sculptures preserved in the municipal collections of Rome: The Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, H.S. Jones, 2 vols, Oxford, 1926 p. 223, no. 18 'Shaft of a Candelabrum', pl. 86 (and other examples illustrated here from Roman finds); Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma III (1875) p. 248, no. 35. describes the find.
2 Antike Kunstvaerker I, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen: Billedtavler (1907), 1. Tilloeg (1915), 2. Tilloeg (1941). pl. V, no. 282a. (see also Vermeule cat. 192, and also its footnote 1)
A complete illustrative example of this type of 'vegetable' shaft, found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome, appears in Jones1. See also the lower section of a candelabrum in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek2.
1 The British School at Rome, Catalogue of ancient sculptures preserved in the municipal collections of Rome: The Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, H.S. Jones, 2 vols, Oxford, 1926 p. 223, no. 18 'Shaft of a Candelabrum', pl. 86 (and other examples illustrated here from Roman finds); Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma III (1875) p. 248, no. 35. describes the find.
2 Antike Kunstvaerker I, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen: Billedtavler (1907), 1. Tilloeg (1915), 2. Tilloeg (1941). pl. V, no. 282a. (see also Vermeule cat. 192, and also its footnote 1)
Provenance
Collected in Rome 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 2, no.17.
Literature
Tatham: Drawings, 1.
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