To an approximate scale of 1:9

reper[t]a. circa. P[alatium]. titi. et uespasiani an[n]o. d[omini]. 1513. (‘Discovered near the palace of Titus and Vespasian in the year of our Lord 1513’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

This exceptionally ornate portal was discovered, as the annotation states, in 1513 and ‘near the palace of Titus and Vespasian’. The location is clarified in another early drawing of it by Baldassare Peruzzi. This describes it as the ‘cornice of a portal in the Baths of Titus’, suggesting it came from either these baths or the neighbouring Baths of Trajan which was often confused with them (see e.g. Platner–Ashby 1929, pp. 533–34), or perhaps from the remains of the Golden House of Nero that were in the same vicinity on the edge of the Oppian Hill just north of the Colosseum. That it is the right-hand end indeed of a portal is indicated by the prominent scrolled bracket at the extremity (not fully inked in and shown partly in black chalk), and this end was seemingly attached to other masonry beyond or behind, which is depicted on the drawing’s far right, although the drawing is unclear as to what the relationships actually was between the two. The Peruzzi drawing, being an orthogonal cross section rather than a raking view, does not show the surface ornament, but it is clearly the same cornice since it is of precisely the same composition and bears measurements that are often identical. It also records a figure, missing from the Coner drawing, ornamenting the bracket’s front. Being one of several miscellaneous studies on the same sheet, Peruzzi’s drawing is probably a copy of one produced previously, and this earlier depiction may well have been related to the original on which the Coner drawing was based. The left-hand part of a portal of very similar design, with a figure likewise on the front of the bracket but with a crowning pediment, is recorded in a drawing in Paris, although this carries an annotation stating that it was immured in the portico of a church, and so it may not be of the same fragment. The portal Peruzzi subsequently designed for his Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome (c.1532) is of a design that is very similar.

The date mentioned of the portal’s discovery, 1513, is one of only two specifically given in the codex, the other being 1512 relating to the drawing of the Obelisk of Augustus (Fol. 42r/Ashby 69 Drawing 4), and it suggests that the original Coner compilation was produced a very short time afterwards.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 632 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 58; Wurm 1984, pl. 463); [Anon.] Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Ms. 2485, fol. 5r (Di Teodoro 2011/12, pp. 96–97)

Ashby 1904, p. 47
Günther 1988, p. 337
Census, ID 47185

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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