To an approximate scale of 1:12

Sub. Colu[m]na[m]. traiana[m] (‘Beneath Trajan’s Column’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing is of the lowest parts of the pedestal of Trajan’s Column, consisting of two plinths above which are a torus adorned with complex guilloche, a cyma with leaf decoration, and, at the top, another torus with rope-like surface decoration. It is also illustrated elsewhere in the codex (Fol. 42r/Ashby 69 Drawing 1 and Fol. 76r/Ashby 129 Drawing 1). The details had previously been recorded by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini, but in orthogonal elevation rather than in the preferred format for such drawings in the Codex Coner of a section combined with a raking view, although in this instance the view is an axonometric one extending upwards to the right. The Sangallo depiction has no measurements on it and so is unlikely to have been the source for the Coner drawing which has many, while the unusual format of the Coner depiction, which is very different from the orthogonal representation of this detail later on, suggests it was based on an independent but now-lost drawing of the same detail produced previously.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 18 (Hülsen 1910, p. 28; Borsi 1985, pp. 112–16)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 42r/Ashby 69; Fol. 53r/Ashby 91 Drawing 3; Fol. 64r/Ashby 109; Fol. 76r/Ashby 129

Ashby 1904, p. 47
Census, ID 45322

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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