To an approximate scale of 1:20

• c.1515
  Datable to c.1515

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing, which has no identifying caption, is very different in both format and style from the others depicting entablatures that precede it in the album, and it is on the first page of material executed after the original commission to create a book of drawings was abandoned probably in 1514. It shows the corner of an entablature together with a Corinthian capital, and its mode of representation, except for the capital, is orthogonal, unlike the codex’s other depictions of Corinthian entablatures. It differs too in its handling, in being executed mostly freehand, in the use of visible and extensive black chalk preparation, and in there being numerous corrections, these particularly to the profiles of the frieze and the mouldings beneath the corona, the extremities of which are shifted a considerable way to the right. Being executed after the original commission was halted would also account for the greater incoherence in the positioning of this drawing and the others on the page. These differences aside, however, the drawing’s actual penwork is in many respects comparable (as is the script of the very occasional annotations on other drawings, e.g. Drawing 5). As the principal drawing on this sheet, it is broadly comparable in subject, that of an architectural order, to the drawing on the verso (Fol. 56v/Ashby 96).

The entablature shown here is unquestionably from the Forum of Trajan, which was beginning to be explored soon after this time (see Viscogliosi 2000, pp. 87–94), possibly belonging to the upper interior order of the Basilica Ulpia or the Temple of Trajan (see Packer 1997, 1, p. 347). Its various components correspond with fragments still in existence. The cornice matches with surviving portions of similarly composed remnants with cyma mouldings beneath dentils (Bertoldi 1962, pp. 11–13; Packer 1997, 1, pp. 347, and 2, plate 93.2). Drawings of identical cornices include a profile sketch of a corner produced, not long after this drawing, by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, and two meticulous and measured depictions of similar fragments, one delineated by Antonio Labacco and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and the other by a Sangallo associate (perhaps Pietro Rosselli), which record it in section-plus-view format. A similar cornice is also seen in a highly comparable orthogonal depiction of a corner now in Berlin where it is shown together with a frieze, although the frieze there is plain and may well be extraneous. The frieze in the Coner drawing, with its distinctive ornamentation of palmettes and anthemion, corresponds with a recovered fragment from Trajan’s Forum now in the Vatican Museums (Bertoldi 1962, Plate 9, no 3), while the architrave, with its Lesbian cyma and bead and reel ornamentation, similarly tallies with surviving vestiges (Bertoldi 1962, Plate 8, no 2). The drawn entablature in its entirety, therefore, could well represent an attempt by some previous draughtman to reconstruct the original composition from parts of it still be seen on site. As for the capital, this has no equivalent either in discovered remains or in drawings of once-visible finds, and its composition with two levels of acanthus, typical of fifteenth-century tastes, rather than three, the ancient norm, would indicate that it is a modern invention.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Antonio da Sangallo the Younger] Florence, GDSU, 1061 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 83; Frommel–Adams 2000, 1, p. 201); [Antonio Labacco and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger] Florence, GDSU, 1211 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 72; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, pp. 145–46); [Pietro Rosselli, attr.] Florence, GDSU, 2051 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 34); [Anon.] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, OZ 114, fol. 13

Ashby 1904, p. 48
Census, ID 45625

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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