To an approximate scale of 1:40

Circum. ecle.siam. S./ petri. Romae. (‘Around the church of St Peter’s in Rome’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

This drawing – identified correctly by Ashby – is of the Doric entablature and a supporting capital that were designed by Bramante for the exterior of the chancel of St Peter’s. The chancel, often referred to as the Chancel (or Choir) of Nicholas V, had been begun around 1450 but little progress was made until construction was resumed under Bramante in 1505, who brought it to near completion before his death in 1514. It was finally demolished in 1585, being incompatible with Michelangelo’s revised design for New St Peter’s (c.1547), just as it had been with many previously conceived schemes. The chancel is known from various early plans, including one elsewhere in the codex (see Fol. 19r/Ashby 31), and also from several sixteenth-century topographical views of the building’s exterior, such as one by Maarten van Heemskerck. These record the chancel, with its Doric pilasters and inset intermediary panels, in the state in which it had been left by Bramante it (see Bruschi 1987), and they correspond with the scheme that is recorded here. They show that the exterior had been completed right up to the height of the frieze, but was still lacking its crowning cornice, which is exactly what is shown in this drawing. This implies that the drawing was based on the structure as built (or on a drawing of it) rather than on a design for the entablature produced by Bramante himself, although its positioning on the sheet may have been calculated to allow the missing cornice to be included if its composition became known. The incomplete entablature is also recorded in a sketch, executed perhaps a little later, by Baldassare Peruzzi.

This sheet is the first of a series in the codex showing entablatures, and the first of several with drawings recording Doric entablatures by combining profiles and raking views, either with or without their accompanying capitals; and this drawing is one of three specimens by Bramante that are included among them, the others relating to the Cortile del Belvedere (Fol. 46v/Ashby 78) and the St Peter’s Tegurio (Fol. 47r/Ashby 79). The capital and entablature are particularly like those Bramante designed for the Tegurio: the capital has rosettes decorating the neck, following the model of the Basilica Aemilia (Fol. 46r/Ashby 77), and the entablature likewise has an ovolo moulding above the frieze, which suggests that the cornice would have had mutules beneath the coronoa, like the Basilica Aemilia. As positioned on the completed building, the entablature rose well beyond the springing level of the interior vault, and the design envisaged high-level apertures immediately above the cornice (Bruschi 1987, p. 281). One of these apertures is recorded in an incomplete state in the Peruzzi drawing, which shows it as having a segmental head and as being recessed well behind the wall surface below.

The drawing was later copied by Michelangelo.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 3Av: left side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 120–21)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 105 Ar (Bruschi 1987, p 281; Wurm 1984, pl. 115); [Maarten van Heemskerck] Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. 79 D 2 (Heemskerck Album I), fol. 15v (Hülsen–Egger 1913–16, 2, p. 34

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 10r/Ashby 17; Fol. 19r/Ashby 31; Fol. 47r/Ashby 69; and for the Tegurio Fol. 47r/Ashby 79; Fol. 68r/Ashby 116

Ashby 1904, pp. 40–41
Günther 1988, p. 337

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.

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk