To an approximate scale of 1:1000

[Drawing] .TERTIA. AИPHITEATRI. CVM. GRADIBVS (‘third level of the amphitheatre with seating’) [Mount] 5 [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 (231x164mm), stitching holes along right edge, rounded corners at left, inlaid [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (224x157mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

See recto

This third-level plan of the Colosseum, identified as such by a caption written in capitals, corresponds with the lower of the two Corinthian orders of the exterior. It completes the set of Colosseum plans, and it is the only one to show the stone seating of the cavea, all of which is represented. In this respect it differs in conception from the previous plan (Fol. 3r/Ashby 4), which ignores the lower levels, and it also differs by showing the seating partly reconstructed, before its despoliation as a ready supply of cheap stone. It thus stands apart from most of the other drawings in the codex, where restoration is deliberately avoided, perhaps because ignoring the seating would have misrepresented the building. Being a plan of the third level, the originally wooden seating of the fourth level has been excluded.

The drawing is again divided into two halves, the upper portion showing the structure without the access points from the stairs into the auditorium, and the lower one adding them in, as was the case with the previous drawing. It is the only surviving Renaissance drawing to reconstruct the overall pattern of access points, and it shows the building as having three circuits of such points, each with 16 openings (although two sets of stairs are omitted on the right-hand side presumably in error). The bottom half, in addition, depicts four of the eight flights of stairs that ran between the rows of seats from the arena to the top of the auditorium. These are shown as uninterrupted flights, and, in this respect, it finds a parallel in a drawing in Vienna.

The drawing is unique among surviving Renaissance plans in illustrating the entire circuit of the Colosseum’s stone seating. Such seating is usually depicted only in elevational drawings; and when it is occasionally included in plans only a quarter of it is shown, as on the sheet in Vienna. The Coner drawing is in many respects similar to the survey plan produced in the nineteenth century by Cresy and Taylor (1821–22, 2, pl. 117), except for the steps running from top to bottom of the cavea, which in the nineteenth-century reconstruction are treated differently by being divided into two sections.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon. Italian B] Vienna, Albertina, inv. Egger no. 23r (Egger 1903, p. 20; Valori 1985, p. 67)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 2r/Ashby 2; Fol. 2v/Ashby 3; Fol. 3r/Ashby 4; Fol. 25r and flap/Ashby 39; Fol. 25 verso of flap/Ashby 39A; Fol. 25v/Ashby 40; Fol. 26r/Ashby 41; Fol. 66r/Ashby 113; Fol. 66v/Ashby 114; Fol. 83v/Ashby 137

Ashby 1904, p. 13
Günther 1988, p. 337
Census, ID 50691

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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