To an approximate scale of 1:450

Tenpli. pacis. (‘Of the Temple of Peace’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

This interior view of the Basilica of Maxentius corresponds with the plan of the building found much earlier in the codex (Fol. 9v/Ashby 16), although it does not precisely match with it in all its details. It shows what remains of the building, albeit reconstructing the clerestory as well as completing the northern apse (left) to its full height, adding some of the missing giant columns, and inserting an imagined restoration of the pedestal for the original statue of the emperor. It differs from the plan, however, by giving the eastern apse a sequence of just five, rather than nine, recesses (arranged in one row rather than the two in reality), and by indicating the fictional screen in front of it as having four columns rather than six. In other respects, the drawing is remarkably accurate at least up to the tops of the enormous framing columns and their entablature blocks, such as in showing the vaults over the three compartments as being segmental rather than semi-circular and in recording octagonal coffers in the central vault and hexagonal coffers in the half-dome of the apse to the rear. It also correctly shows the columns as standing directly on the floor, and the windows at the backs of the aisle compartments as rising from significantly above this level, features that were difficult to establish given the sheer amount of debris piled up inside the building, which, as recorded in an early sixteenth-century drawing sometimes attributed to Bramante, then reached half-way up the column shafts. The elevation, however, is misleading in its scale. As with various other drawings in the codex, the height is significantly decreased, in this instance by reducing the height of the walls supporting the vaults.

As for the basilica’s upper level, the drawing unusually attempts a reconstruction of what originally existed, the then-surviving remains providing only the faintest indications of the footings for the clerestory’s original apertures (see e.g. Desgodetz 1682, p. 107). The left-hand bay in the drawing is left largely blank but indicates the total width of the upper-level apertures, perhaps based on available evidence, the right-hand bay has three arches, thereby repeating the format of the windows in the aisle compartments below, while the central bay is allocated a serliana window, a three-bay aperture of modern invention with a central arch supported on columns. The presence of the serliana window may appear anachronistic, and overly influenced by the early occurrences of serliana windows in modern buildings, such as the altar area designed by Bramante for Santa Maria del Popolo (c.1508), and perhaps early proposals he was making for St Peter’s. It is certainly the case that the cathedral at Carpi, designed by Baldassare Peruzzi in 1514 and closely modelled on early designs for St Peter’s (see e.g. Parsons 2004), has serliana windows at clerestory level. Yet it may well be that, by this time, many believed the serliana to be a genuinely ancient motif, and there are certainly later representations of antiquities where serliana compositions are featured, such as Palladio’s reconstruction drawings of the interiors of baths, where it is used for both column screens and windows. In drawings by others of this building, however, the serliana is not seen – assuming it was considered it at all. The early elevational view found in the Codex Mellon, which dates from the late teens, featured trios of arched windows at this upper level, while another in Vienna dating to around 1519 has plausible triple apertures in the form of truncated thermal windows, like some of those still seen at the Baths of Diocletian.

The Coner drawing finds close parallels with certain other early images, especially with regard to it being of an unusual representational type, unique in the codex, that combines a perspectival view of the surviving fabric with a perspectival suggestion of the ground plan, here achieved by including, in the right foreground, the ‘footprint’ of one of the southern piers and its accompanying column plinth, to create an effect of showing the plan of a large portion of the entire building in perspective. Such a combination of view and plan is also seen in the slightly later drawing in the Codex Mellon (which shows a colossal statue in the restored western apse) and in one in Vienna, although in both cases the view is united with a perspectival representation of the entire plan. Similar too is an interior view found in a manuscript by Antonio da Faenza. Especially close, however, is a drawing by Palladio, which is rendered in a comparable ‘wide-angle’ perspective and likewise shows a reconstructed western apse, one and a half bays of the eastern porch, and all the upper-level windows left largely blank like in the Coner drawing’s left-hand bay. Despite Palladio’s drawing being curiously reversed in orientation, the similarity is such that they could have both been based on the same lost original drawing. Combining elevational and plan elements can be useful for showing the complexities of a building, such as the Basilica of Maxentius, in a very neat and compact manner, and this hybrid representational technique was also being exploited, at around this very time, by Baldassare Peruzzi in a justly-famous drawing for St Peter’s, which combines elevational elements mostly at full height towards the rear, with perspectival plan components at the front.

RELATED IMAGES: [Andrea Palladio] London, RIBA, Palladio I, 4 (Zorzi 1958, p. 78)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Bramante, attr.] Florence, GDSU, 1711 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 11–12); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 2 A (Wurm 1984, pl. 494); [Domenico Aima (il Varignana), attr.] New York, Morgan Library, Codex Mellon, fol. 54r; [Anonymous Italian C of 1519] Vienna, Albertina, inv. Egger no. 9r (Egger 1903, p. 18; Valori 1985, pp. 102–04; Günther 1988, p. 341 and pl. 32a); [Antonio da Faenza] Private Collection, Codex Bury, fol. 51r (Strauch 2019, 2, pp. 489–91)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 9v/Ashby 16; Fol. 37r/Ashby 59 (Drawing 2 on this page)

Ashby 1904, p. 36
Census, ID 44033

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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