To an approximate scale of 1:75

Talis. est. rotu[n]do. qualis. acuto/ pr[a]eterea. Colu[m]n[a]e. rotunda[rum]. no[n]. sunt/ canalata (‘This one [tabernacle] is round just as the other is pointed. In addition, the columns of the round ones are not fluted’)

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

This tabernacle, together with the one shown next to it (Drawing 1), is one of the two types in the Pantheon, as the caption of the first drawing implies. The type seen here is similar to the other, such as in having columns rising from pedestals (now replaced by a continuous socle: see Cat. Drawing 1), but it differs in having a segmental rather than a triangular pediment and smooth not fluted shafts, as is specified in this drawing’s annotation. The four tabernacles in the Pantheon of this design are located to either side of the building’s transverse axis, and the drawing is likely to be of one of those with red porphyry shafts on the far side with respect to the entrance. This would be because the two with grey granite shafts and rather different capitals are not original, the original ones having been reused for the ciborium erected over the building’s high altar by Pope Innocent VIII in 1491 (Muñoz 1912; Nesselrath 2015b). The tabernacles as remade with new columns and capitals are recorded in an early sixteenth-century drawing in the RIBA.

The drawing is positioned close to the other one to allow the two tabernacles to be compared. This drawing, however, was executed before the other, as is clear from the way in which the receding lines at the right edge of the first drawing (belonging to the side wall of the adjacent exedra) run up against the left-hand column and pedestal shown in this one. Nevertheless, their close relationship is reflected by the way in which the measurements are recorded, the drawing of the left-hand tabernacle tending to focus on vertical dimensions, and this one being concerned with horizontal ones, so that the former indicates the height of the opening at the tabernacle’s rear while the latter gives its width. In format and composition, however, the Coner drawing does not match its partner as it omits the framing pilaster, and in its perspectival mode of representation it assumes a viewpoint from directly in front rather that from beyond one of its sides. These differences must be, in part, the result of the two drawings being derived from separate originals that were of different format and composition. This Coner drawing was later copied by Amico Aspertini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Amico Aspertini] London, BM, Aspertini Sketchbook II, fol. 42r (Bober 1957, p. 89)

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. 38v/Ashby 62; Fol. 40r/Ashby 65; Fol. 50v/Ashby 86; Fol. 65r/Ashby 111; Fol. 81r/Ashby 134; Fol. 83r/Ashby 136

Ashby 1904, p. 37
Ashby 1913, pp. 201–02
Census, ID 46544

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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