To an approximate scale of 1:80

[Drawing] porphidus. (‘porphyry’) [x2]; Granitus. et./ relique. ma/rmorum. (‘Granite and remnants of marbles’); Granitus./ Sine. canali./bus. (‘Granite without flutes’); [measurements]; 51 [early seventeenth-century hand] [Mount] 62 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines; on laid paper (166x232mm), inlaid (back to front and rotated clockwise by 90 degrees with respect to original foliation) [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (160x225mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

See recto

The view, within the central passageway of the Pantheon’s portico looking left (east), shows at the far left a Corinthian column from the third rank behind the façade, and to its right the eastern flanking wall of the vaulted recess in front of the entrance portal. This wall begins with a fluted anta (square-sectioned column) that responds to the portico column and then abuts another anta standing a little forward from it, which acts as a pilaster that is separated from another pilaster by a bay, at the portal end, containing various superimposed panels. These panels, positioned between string courses top and bottom, are recorded here as comprising, at the top, one made of porphyry which is then followed by a decorated frieze (left blank), a tall panel of granite, another decorated frieze (with a garland hanging from two candelabra), and a final panel of porphyry towards the bottom. They have long since been lost, and this drawing is one of the few surviving records of their existence, being a mainly faithful rendition of this part of the building even though the Corinthian capitals are shown as being rather too tall. Judging from the annotations, the drawing was also intended to record materials, and it is one of the few in the codex to do so. Apart from the panels, it also notes that the column is unfluted and made of granite, distinguishing it from the fluted anta next to it especially clearly.

The drawing is anomalous in the codex in representing its subject in perspective from a vantage point just to the left of the column at the left, making it unlike most other Coner drawings which show their subjects from beyond their right-hand corners. It is also anomalous in having its viewing point low down at normal eye level, allowing the underside of lower decorated frieze to be seen, rather than at much higher up. In addition, although the entablature mouldings are mostly not indicated, as is usual for elevational drawings in the codex, this is not the case with those above the second anta where the profile is meticulously recorded. These discrepancies would all be explained if the drawing was based on an earlier one with similar characteristics, which seems highly likely to judge from a cursory sketch of the same entrance wall produced just a little later by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. The sketch is highly comparable in both coverage and composition, and it similarly identifies the materials of the panels, and so it was most probably dependent on a drawing that also provided a basis for the Coner depiction.

In the original compilation, this drawing was a recto not a verso and so it preceded the representation of the façade now on the other side of the sheet (Fol. 38r/Ashby 61), an odd sequence given that façades in the codex normally took precedence over more specialised details such as this. This unusual ordering may suggest that it was originally intended for a slightly different position in the overall sequence of Pantheon drawings, before their ordering was then reconsidered when the sheets were initially bound. Later, when mounted in the present album, the sheet was also turned sideways from its original orientation, to privilege the landscape format of the façade drawing on the other side.

RELATED IMAGES: [Antonio da Sangallo the Younger] Florence, GDSU, 1157 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 65; Frommel–Adams 2000, pp. 212–13).

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 8r/Ashby 13; Fol. 23r/Ashby 35; Fol. 23v/Ashby 36; Fol. 24r/Ashby 37; Fol. 24v/Ashby 38; Fol. 38r/Ashby 61; Fol. 39r/Ashby 63; Fol. 40r/Ashby 65; Fol. 50v/Ashby 86; Fol. 65r/Ashby 111; Fol. 81r/Ashby 134; Fol. 83r/Ashby 136

Ashby 1904, p. 37
Census, ID 44687

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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