To an approximate scale of 1:4

minuta. 20 (’20 minutes’); [other measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

An annotation on the neighbouring drawing (Drawing 2) states that this section of entablature was found at Rome’s church of San Marco, which led Ashby to speculate that it came originally from the nearby Domus Turciorum. Information about the same cornice, however, appears on a later French drawing in New York’s Metropolitan Museum, which specifies that it was to be seen behind Sant’Angelo in Pescheria, the church attached to the Portico of Octavia some 400m to the south. Although it is conceivable that parts of the same entablature had been dispersed, it is equally possible that a mistake was made in recording the location, perhaps based on information taken from a previous drawing, as is also the case with the drawing of the Doric entablature depicted below (Drawing 3). It seems possible that the entablature shown in the Coner drawing comes from the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, as it is obviously very similar to a fragment of an entablature kept in the courtyard adjacent to the temple of the Dipartimento Attività Culturali della Comune, which is labelled as once belonging to the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, and has extremely unusual modillions which, just as in the Coner drawing, are much flatter compared with the norm and are plain except for having ribs down their middles. The entablature recorded in the Coner drawing is certainly not the temple’s main entablature, not least because it was much smaller, measuring only about 35cm in height, but it could have come from an associated structure.

The Coner drawing is unlike the drawing in New York and others in the Mellon Codex and in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, which are orthogonal and depict corners rather in the form of a cross section with a raking view. It is accompanied, however, by another drawing to its left that provides a plan of a corner (Drawing 2). The annotation on this other drawing describes the cornice as being Ionic, although it has no features that are specifically associated with this order. Nevertheless, it was perhaps regarded as Ionic, since it was not Doric as it lacked triglyphs, and not Corinthian as it was so plain. Why the drawings of this entablature should have been shown on the same sheet as two depictions of a Doric entablature (Drawings 3 and 4) may simply be because the two entablatures, described as being at the same erroneous location, had been depicted as a pair with comparable compositions on some now-lost previous sheet. The two, moreover, are both very small, and they both share the abnormality of having their modillions or mutules projecting beyond the face of the corona. This drawing was copied by Michelangelo and, later on, by Borromini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB 3Ar: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 118–19); [Francesco Borromini] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, HdZ 3826, inv. Thelen 2 (Thelen 1967, 1, pp. 11–12)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Domenico Aima (il Varignana), attr.] New York, Morgan Library, Codex Mellon, fol. 14r; [Anon. French] New York, Metropolitan Museum, Goldschmidt Scrapbook, fol. 34r (D’Orgeix 2001, p. 197); [Anon.] Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. CC 1326

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 44r/Ashby 73 Drawing 2

Ashby 1904, pp. 40–41
Census, ID 47179

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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