To an approximate scale of 1:55

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink over stylus lines and compass pricks

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing is a horizontal section through the shaft of one of the enormous columns from the Basilica of Maxentius. It could be of one of the two still standing at the start of the sixteenth century, seen in a drawing sometimes attributed to Bramante, perhaps the one (between the left-hand and central arches) that remained in place until 1613, when it was removed and re-erected in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore; but it may have been derived instead from a fragment of one of the other six columns that was already fallen. The shaft, fluted but monolithic and made of marble, is of around a colossal 15m, or fifty Roman feet, in height (with a total column height approaching 19m or sixty-five Roman feet; see Minoprio 1932, p. 9), while the flutes are a standard twenty-four in number. The column was of interest to other early draftsmen, including Baldassare Peruzzi around 1519 and Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo at around the same time, who both made comparable sketches of the section.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Bramante, attr.] Florence, GDSU, 1711 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 11–12); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 396 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 41–42; Wurm 1984, pl. 8); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 487 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 45; Wurm 1984, pl. 78); [Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1652 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 100; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, pp. 196–97)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 9v/Ashby 16; Fol. 37r/Ashby 59 (Drawing 1 on the page)

Ashby 1904, p. 36
Census, ID 45043

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.

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk