To an approximate scale of 1:150

[Drawing] .ORTHOGRAFIA. PVLCRI. VIDERE. PO[N]TIFICIS. (‘Elevation of the Belvedere of the pope’); [measurements]
[Mount] 43 [x2]

• 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 (232x168mm), stitching holes along right edge, rounded corners at left, inlaid (window on verso of mount)
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart

Bernardo della Volpaia

[Drawing] Anchor in circle topped with six-pointed star (variant 6; cut at right)

This perspectival drawing, and the orthogonal version that originally faced it on the adjacent page (Fol. 28r/Ashby 45), are the earliest records of Bramante’s final design for the elevations of the Cortile del Belvedere's lower terrace, begun in 1505 and designed in its final form over the years around 1510 (see Hemsoll 2019b, pp. 127–32). With its three very differently composed storeys, the scheme was of considerable inventiveness and novelty, especially in respect to the bottom storey having a Doric order, which may well be the earliest of the Renaissance to have triglyphs and metopes in the frieze, and in it being surmounted by Ionic and then Corinthian orders (on which see Serlio 1619, 3, fol. 118v). The three bays shown here, in a drawing identified by a caption in imitation-antique capitals, apparently include the eastern entrance arch into the lower storey, since at the centre there is no niche in the back wall. The top storey is left unfinished in its upper reaches, with main pilaster order being truncated halfway up the shaft, but stylus lines rising above the finished parts, together with pen lines corresponding to the rough shape of a capital and the top edge of the panel that was to complete the zone above the minor order there, may indicate some faint knowledge of what the completed building was to look like. The abrupt discontinuation, however, matches precisely with that of the similarly unfinished, orthogonal elevation that follows (Fol. 28r/Ashby 45), and it perhaps documents the height to which construction had reached when the two drawings were made, as well as indicating that they were both dependent on the same drawn prototype. The depiction also matches a mid- sixteenth-century drawing, now in Kassel, and corresponds more-or-less with the woodcut illustration of the elevation included by Sebastiano Serlio in Book Three (1540) of his architectural treatise, which may imply that these were ultimately dependent on the same source. Differences between the two Coner elevations, such as in the spacing of the Doric pilasters, which in this drawing is too broad, and the height of the middle storey, which is too squat, are probably the result of estimating the proportions by eye rather than attempting an accurately scaled drawing.

The Cortlile’s eastern elevation was greatly altered after its partial collapse of 1531. The lower-storey arches were bricked up to reinforce the structure, the middle storey had its rectangular windows replaced with arched openings and its niches filled in (1541), and the top-storey intercolumniations were eventually walled up as well. Further alterations were made when a series of buttresses was gradually added in the late seventeenth century. Despite these alterations, however, small remnants of the Doric and Ionic orders of the first two storeys survive as Bramante designed them (Frommel 1998, pp. 28–29), and the upper-storey columns are still partly visible from within (Frommel 1998, p. 54).

This drawing bears few measurements, presumably in the knowledge that the other elevational drawing (Fol. 28r/Ashby 45) was to be the principal vehicle for recording such data. The occasional measurements on this drawing all relate to features that are hidden in the other elevational drawing, suggesting that the two were designed to be complementary. The drawing was copied by Amico Aspertini in the late 1530s.

RELATED IMAGES: [Amico Aspertini] London, BM, Aspertini Sketchbook II, fol. 39r (Bober 1957, p. 89)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Graphische Sammlung, Kassel Codex, fol. 22v (Günther 1988, p. 372 and pl. 120a); Serlio 1619, fol. 119r

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 15r/Ashby 25; Fol. 27v/Ashby 44; Fol. 28r/Ashby 45; Fol. 28v/Ashby 46; Fol. 46v/Ashby 78; Fol. 53v/Ashby 92; Fol. 54r/Ashby 93; Fol. 68r/Ashby 116; Fol. 69r/Ashby 117; Fol. 72r/Ashby 122

Ashby 1904, pp. 30–31
Ashby 1913, p. 200
Ackerman 1954, p. 195
Günther 1988, p. 337

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