Papal Cartouche with Tiara and Keys

The references to the papacy and the shell at the bottom of this study--a motif that appears throughout Piranesi's drawings for the Lateran Basilica--surely indicate a connection to that project. Similar features are found at the upper corners of the baldachin that Piranesi planned to construct above the altar (seen among the drawings at Columbia University); this is perhaps a study for those elements, or else for the papal arms imagined as an overdoor decoration in the "Tavola Decimaottava" among the finished drawings for the Lateran now in the collection of the Avery Library at Columbia University. A similar drawing is at the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, HdZ 138.