SPECIMEN ENTRY FROM: SARCHOPHAGI AND OTHER RELIEFS (A.III)

AN ANCIENT THEATRE WITH A COMEDY IN PROGRESS
(ATTRIBUTED TO BERNARDINO CAPITELLI (1590-1639))

Windsor, RL 8404. Pen and dark brown ink, with brown wash,  over traces of  black chalk.
454 x 400 mm.
NUMBERING: 211
PROVENANCE: dal Pozzo; Albani; George III  and by descent to Her Majesty The Queen
LITERATURE: Vermeule, 1996, p.26;  Herklotz, 1992, p.121

This reconstruction drawing was copied from one in Fulvio Orsini's competition in the Vatican Library (MS. Lat.3439, fol.56r).  For Cassiano (referring to it in a commentary that he wrote in c.1630 on L.Pignoria's de Servisof 1613), it showed 'the orchestra and the manner in which the spectators were seated'.  The external elevation of the theatre owes something to the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome, and the scene being enacted on the stage is probably modelled after an ancient marble relief (now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. no. 6687).

Amanda Claridge


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