To an approximate scale of 1:90

[Drawing] PV[LCRI]. V[IDERE]. DESVPRA. (‘Belvedere above’); [measurements]; 41 [early seventeenth-century hand] [Mount] 44 [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 left edge, rounded corners at right, inlaid (back-to-front with respect to original foliation) [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (225x162mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

See recto

The drawing, as the caption in antique-inspired capitals makes clear, is of the Cortile del Belvedere’s uppermost terrace, depicting part of the one of the side ranges in its original state, a run that includes three wider bays with open arches (those at either side only partly seen) and two narrower bays between them, with the arches giving onto a passageway behind, here indicated by a line running across them at pedestal level to represent the bottom of the back wall. It cannot represent the transverse range at the terrace’s far end since this had blind arches from the outset. As shown, the elevation’s open arches were set between projecting bays dressed with Corinthian pilasters that framed niches set just above the pedestal zone and square panels positioned above the level of the arch imposts. The drawing also records the unusual and distinctive feature of the cornice having a continuous corona, acting rather like a lid above the projections and recessions beneath (see also Fol. 54r/Ashby 93), a feature that can still be discerned on the west elevation as it exists today, and one that finds a precedent in the courtyard of Giuliano da Sangallo Palazzo Scala in Florence (c.1480). The plan at the bottom of the sheet corresponds closely with the elevation above it but represents the side bays in two different ways because it shows them at different levels. The part to the left is at pedestal level and the one to the right, as suggested by the niche, is at pilaster level, like in the plan of the same part of the Cortile included on one of the codex’s earlier pages (Fol. 15r/Ashby 25 Drawing 6). Using drawings to convey as much information as possible is a common strategy seen in the codex.

In the original compilation, this drawing came first in the sequence of elevational drawings of the Cortile, which is perhaps odd given that its caption is not as clear or as prominent as the one that originally followed it (Fol. 27r/Ashby 43), and this may help explain why the sheet was reversed when mounted into the album by Cassiano dal Pozzo. It is probable, therefore, that when the compilation was first planned a different sequence was envisaged which was abandoned when the drawings were bound. The drawing’s position low down on the sheet is hard to explain, especially as its width seems to have been so well gauged in relation to the space available, so it may well be that another drawing was intended to be added above it.

The Coner depiction tallies closely with an early elevational drawing of the upper terrace now in Kassel, which is also of three full bays but makes the pedestals rather too short. Other early drawings include one in the Uffizi that records five full bays, and a plate in Sebastiano Serlio’s treatise first published in 1540 that shows seven, and similarly includes a corresponding plan beneath, suggesting a shared ancestry. The Coner image was itself used as the basis for an inventive ‘copy’ by Amico Aspertini in the second of his London sketchbooks. This drawing (fol. 42r) is certainly based on the Coner depiction as it likewise shows the elevation (albeit now rendered in perspective) with a corresponding plan beneath it. Another Aspertini drawing (fol. 26v) would also appear to be based on the Coner original, albeit far more loosely in having a rusticated archivolt and a full entablature at the springing of the arch, but some dependency is seemingly suggested by the unbroken cornice running above an architrave and frieze that alternate in their projection and recession.

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

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Graphische Sammlung, Kassel Codex, fol. 22v (Günther 1988, p. 372 and pl. 120a); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 7946 Ar (Günther 1988, pp. 349–50 and pl. 67); [Amico Aspertini] London, BM, Aspertini Sketchbook II, fols 26v (Bober 1957, p. 85); Serlio 1619, fols 117v and 120r

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 15r/Ashby 25; Fol. 27r/Ashby 43; 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, p. 32
Ashby 1913, p. 200
Ackerman 1954, p. 196

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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