[Drawing] .ИOTA. QVOD. OMNIA. QVAE. ISTO./ LIBRO. SVИT. ME[N]SSVRATA. CVM. BRA/CHIIS. FLORE[N]TIИIS. DIVIDEИDO. B/RACHIVM. IИ. PARTES. SEXAGI[N]TA./ QVAS. VOCO. MIИVTA. ET. CVM. IP/SIS. MIИVTIS. MIИVTISSIME. ME[N]/SSVRATVM. EST. (‘Note that all [the buildings] that are in this book are measured in Florentine braccia, dividing the braccio into sixty parts which I call minutes, and with these minutes [everything] is measured very minutely.’)
[Mount] 1 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink over stylus lines; on laid paper (63x154mm), cropped top and bottom, inlaid (window on verso of mount)
[Verso] Blank
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart
[Verso of mount] Window (59x149mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

The text on this opening page of the Codex Coner has the appearance of an ancient inscription, being written in Latin and rendered in capitals with serifs. Bar one, all the letters ‘N’ are reversed, and the letter ‘V’ is twice joined to the following letter ‘A’ to form a single glyph, idiosyncrasies that were probably fanciful attempts to give the writing an ancient character. The imitation of ancient inscriptions is seen elsewhere in the codex in many of the identifying captions (e.g. Fol. 2r/Ashby 2, Fol. 2v/Ashby 3, Fol. 3r/Ashby 4, etc.), and such a practice was not wholly innovative. Giuliano da Sangallo had already followed it for the frontispiece of his Codex Barberini and sporadically thereafter, and this work was a probable source of inspiration for the pseudo-inscriptions in the Codex Coner.

Specifically, the text states that the measurements given on very many of the codex’s drawings are in Florentine braccia and that each braccio was subdivided into sixty ‘minutes’. The Florentine braccio was widely used in Rome to measure ancient buildings, being the unit most familiar to the many Florentine architects visiting the city or living there, and the one to which their measuring chains and rods were presumably calibrated. At around 0.584m (Martini 1883, p. 206), it was just under twice the size of the Roman piede (0.298m), and around two-and-two-thirds the size of the Roman palmo (0.223m; 0.75 feet), which were the local Roman units of measure (Martini 1883, p. 596). Dividing the braccio up into 60 minutes was less common than breaking it down into 20 soldi, which is the convention followed in the roughly contemporary Codex Strozzi, but minutes were sometimes used in drawings by Giuliano da Sangallo and others (see Cat. Fol. 41v/Ashby 68 Drawing 1). The note stresses that the buildings were measured ‘very minutely’, implying they were determined more accurately than in other drawings then in circulation.

The sheet, for reasons that are unclear, is one of only two in the codex that have been significantly cut down (cf. Fol. 77r/Ashby 131). It was the opening page of the original compilation’s first gathering.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 1r (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 3; Borsi 1985, pp. 41–43).

Ashby 1904, p. 13

Drawing

Digitisation of the Codex Coner has been made possible through the generosity of the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, Berlin

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