To an approximate scale of 1:7

[Mount] 74 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks; on laid paper (233x166mm), rounded corners at left, inlaid
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (224x160mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

See recto

The subject of this drawing, correctly identified by Ashby in 1914, is a capital from the southernmost of three neighbouring temples in the ancient Forum Holitorium. The temple had begun to be dismantled in 1506 so that its stone could be used to enlarge the neighbouring church San Nicola in Carcere, to leave just its northern colonnade which is immured into the church’s northern flank (Crozzoli Aite 1981, pp. 32 and 34). Sometime around 1520, however, all three temples began to be systematically explored and became the subjects of numerous drawings by Antonio da Sangallo, Baldassare Peruzzi and their circles.

Unlike its two companions, the temple is Doric, although its capitals are of very unusual design. Instead of the usual neck just below the echinus, there is a short cylindrical element positioned between a pair of cyma mouldings, with the neck itself then following beneath it. The Coner drawing, the earliest record of the capital to survive, combines a section with a perspectival view, unlike the subsequent depictions of it by Peruzzi and Giovanni Battista da Sangallo which are simple profiles, as are two representations of it published by Sebastiano Serlio in Books Three (1540) and Four (1537) of his treatise. The placing of the drawing near to the sheet’s bottom-right corner corresponds with the positions of Doric capitals in other nearby Coner drawings (e.g. Fol. 45v/ Ashby 76), and suggests the original intention was to depict an accompanying section and view of the entablature; and part of the rear line of this intended section, with associated measurements, can be seen close to the sheet’s right-hand edge. A later drawing by Palladio (probably a copy of an earlier image) combines the capital with a depiction of the entablature but in an orthogonal format. The Coner drawing was copied by Michelangelo.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] CB, 3Ar: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 116–17)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 477 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 59; Wurm 1984, pl. 469); [Giovanni Battista da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1376 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 93; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, pp. 173–74); Serlio 1619, 3, fol. 60r, and 4, fol. 141v; [Andrea Palladio] London, RIBA, Palladio 11, 5r (Zorzi 1958, p. 79)

Ashby 1904, p. 42
Ashby 1913, p. 205
Census, ID 45028

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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