Vase with vine decoration atop a hexagonal base decorated with garlands bearing Erotes

Piranesi’s workshop was known for its imaginatively decorative object designs, in which antique fragments were skilfully combined and embellished with modern elements and thus transformed into new sculptural designs. This drawing demonstrates one such assemblage: it consists of a pedestal adorned with Erotes, above it a curiously double-ended composite creature of reclining lion and sphinx, which in turn bears a heavy vase decorated with vegetal scrollwork. The depiction was by no means intended as the archaeologically faithful reconstruction of an antique find. Rather, it was probably created as an emboldening design whose appeal lay in its ingenuity and which encouraged designers to be similarly inventive. Tiny pin pricks and oil stains indicate that the drawing was pounced for transfer, and traced. The most likely reason for doing so would have been to transfer the design to the printing plate – however, no print of this motif is known to exist. The drawing is therefore the only representation of an assemblage in the Karlsruhe albums that was not published as an etching.