To an approximate scale of 1:220

[Drawing] .S. mari[a]e roto[n]d[a]e./ porticalasin. (‘Of Santa Maria Rotunda, portico to the left’) [Inscribed on monument] .M. AGRIPPA. L. F. COS. TERTIVM. FECIT. (= CIL, 6, 896: M[ARCVS] AGRIPPA L[VCI] F[ILIVS] CO[N]S[VL] TERTIVM FECIT) [Mount] 61 [x2]; Portico of Pantheon at Rome. [in pencil]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks; on laid paper (166x232mm), rounded corners at bottom, inlaid (back to front and rotated anticlockwise by 90 degrees with respect to original foliation, window on verso of mount) [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart

Bernardo della Volpaia

[Drawing] None [Mount] Fleur-de-lys in circle surmounted by crown (variant 2)

This drawing is the principal depiction in the codex of the Pantheon’s façade, complete with dedicatory inscription (today renewed) which was then easily reconstructed from the holes used for attaching the original bronze letters and was previously published (together with the secondary inscription below it) in Francesco Albertini’s guide to Rome (Albertini 1510, 2, chapter 2, fol. Liiii v). It shows the building as it would have looked in antiquity, firstly by showing the façade rising from a ground level appreciably below that in the sixteenth century, which required steps leading down into the portico that can easily be seen in a drawing by Maarten van Heemskerck, and secondly by removing later accretions such as the low walls and doors that had been inserted between the columns, the large brick support between the two columns at the portico’s left end, and the campanile behind the portico erected in 1270, which are all seen (albeit not all together) in early views (Nesselrath 2015b), one in the Codex Escurialensis and another by ‘Pseudo-Cronaca’ in the Uffizi. The two columns on the left are thus the original columns and not their seventeenth-century replacements (Marder–Wilson Jones 2015, pp. 24–25).

The drawing represents the façade in perspective from a vantage point just beyond the portico’s right corner, in order to include a raking view of the side elevation, the preferred manner for depicting façade elevations in the codex, and analogous to the earlier depiction of the Pantheon from the side (Fol. 24r/Ashby 37). It also provides glimpses of the portal at the back of the portico and the recess in which the portal is set, and of the large niche to the portal’s right, the corresponding niche to the left being obscured from view, although it avoids showing the columns on the left behind the frontal row. The rotunda behind is shown to give a clear sense of its curvature, although with an exaggerated bulging that results from a shortage of space on the sheet’s right margin. No attempt is made to depict the details of the entablature, which is normal practice in the codex, even though this entablature is not shown in a more detailed drawing, unlike the internal entablatures that feature later on (Fol. 50v/Ashby 86 and Fol. 65r/Ashby 111). The measurements correspond with those on other sheets and clearly belong to the same set, the portico’s width for example being given as 59 braccia and 36 minutes as it likewise is on the plan (Fol. 8r/Ashby 13). They were presumably all derived from one and the same survey, but applied to the various individual drawings, including this one, which were formulated to suite the codex’s preferred representational techniques.

One of the oddities of this drawing and the three of the Pantheon that follow it is that they are not grouped with the other elevational drawings of the Pantheon that appear earlier in the codex (Fol. 23r/Ashby 35, Fol. 23v/Ashby 36, Fol. 24r/Ashby 37, and Fol. 24v/Ashby 38). A possible explanation is that those from the earlier group tend to represent the whole structure, whereas those from this second group tend to show parts of it that are smaller than the whole but larger than the details included later on. It may also be the case, however, that the final ordering did not accord with one that was originally planned.

Since the caption of the Coner drawing is less than fully explicit, this was remedied in a nineteenth-century annotation on the mount. The drawing was later copied by Amico Aspertini, although not very carefully, since he rather muddles the positions of the portico columns and the large niche to the right of the door.

RELATED IMAGES: [Amico Aspertini] London, BM, Aspertini Sketchbook II, fol. 41v (Bober 1957, p. 89)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, 28-II-12 (Codex Escurialensis), fol. 43v (Egger 1905–06, p. 116); [‘Pseudo-Cronaca’] Florence, GDSU, 160 Sr (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 9); [Circle of Maarten van Heemskerck] Berlin, SMB-PK, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. 79 D 2a (Heemskerck Album II), fol. 2r (Hülsen–Egger 1913–16, 2, p. 3).

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. 38v/Ashby 62; 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. 36
Census, ID 43441

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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