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Folio 4 recto (Ashby 6): Mausoleum known as the Tor de’Schiavi (main storey)
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Reference number
SM volume 115/6
Purpose
Folio 4 recto (Ashby 6): Mausoleum known as the Tor de’Schiavi (main storey)
Aspect
Plan
Scale
To an approximate scale of 1:150
Inscribed
[Drawing] Pianta d’vn tempio del Dio Eolo (‘Plan of a temple of the god Aeolus’)
[Mount] 6 [x2]
Signed and dated
- c.1625/35
Date range: c.1625/35
Medium and dimensions
[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and pink-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks; on laid paper (229x158mm), stitching holes along right edge, trimmed (rounded corners absent, formerly at left), inlaid (back-to-front with respect to original foliation, window on verso of mount)
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart
Hand
Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist)
Watermark
[Drawing] None [Mount] None
Notes
This seventeenth-century drawing – added to the codex before the original compilation was converted into an album – was originally on a verso as is clear from the placement of the folio number on the sheet’s current verso. Its draughtsman, previously dubbed the Codex Ursinianus Copyist, was one of two individuals employed by Cassiano dal Pozzo to produce such additions to the codex (Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 597–99), but he was evidently inexperienced in depicting buildings, as is indicated by the use of wash only on alternate steps of the plan depicted, making these steps rather difficult to read (Campbell, ibid.). The plan is of the main storey of a building that is also represented in a second drawing a few pages further on (Fol. 5v/Ashby 9); and it comprises a domed rotunda and an entrance portico approached by a flight of steps. The rotunda is arrayed internally with eight niches alternately square and round and has what would appear to be a huge oculus at the centre of a dome up above. The portico is four columns in width and two in depth, and its three aisles lead, like the Pantheon’s, to an entrance portal and a pair of flanking niches.
The drawing is a close copy of one by Francesco da Sangallo (Giuliano da Sangallo’s son) that was added to his father’s Codex Barberini. It follows Francesco’s model carefully, this exemplified by the use of dotted lines for the architraves above the columns, and by the unconventional double ring around the oculus. In identifying the building as a Temple of Aeolus, it again follows the Codex Barberini, which is the only known source for such an identification, but it omits the other annotations. The building has sometimes been identified, incorrectly, as the so-called Mausoleum of Romulus on the Via Appia just to the south of Rome near the Villa of Maxentius (e.g. Ashby 1904; Campbell, 2, pp. 599–600), seemingly because Francesco da Sangallo, in his annotation, had specified the location as being ‘at San Sebastiano’ (a S[ant]o Bastiano), a pilgrimage church that is close to the Via Appia (see also Cat. Fol. 5v/Ashby 9). The building depicted, however, cannot be the Mausoleum of Romulus because it is much too small. A scale on the Sangallo drawing indicates that the rotunda is 28 Florentine braccia (16m) in diameter whereas that of the Mausoleum of Romulus is more than twice that size and measures 57 braccia (33m). A more likely candidate is the similar but smaller mausoleum known as the Tor de’Schiavi at the Villa of the Gordians on the via Praenestina just to the east of the city (see Rasch 1993; LTUR Suburbium 2001–08, 3, pp. 31–39), which has a rotunda far closer in size, measuring 19.35m in diameter (Rasch 1993, plate 74A). In support of such an identification is the presence of the niches at the rear of the portico, which are still extant in the mausoleum at the Villa of the Gordians but absent in the Mausoleum of Romulus, since the main storey of this building (LTUR Suburbium 2001–08, 4, pp. 51–52) was probably never constructed. The fact that Francesco da Sangallo describes the dome as having a ‘light’ (lume), or opening, at the centre, which would make it unlike the dome of the Gordians’ mausoleum as recorded in drawings by Sallustio Peruzzi and Giovannantonio Dosio (Campbell 2004, pp. 306–07), can be accounted for if Francesco was copying an earlier drawing and had interpreted a circular field at the centre of the dome as an oculus. Such a copying process could well explain, too, how he was mistaken about the building’s location, given the general similarity between the structures.
RELATED IMAGES: [Francesco da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 43v (Hülsen 1910, 1, pp. 58–59; Borsi 1985, p. 59)
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Sallustio Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 668 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 121); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Windsor, RL, 19253r (Campbell 2004, 1, pp. 306–08)
OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 5v/Ashby 9
The drawing is a close copy of one by Francesco da Sangallo (Giuliano da Sangallo’s son) that was added to his father’s Codex Barberini. It follows Francesco’s model carefully, this exemplified by the use of dotted lines for the architraves above the columns, and by the unconventional double ring around the oculus. In identifying the building as a Temple of Aeolus, it again follows the Codex Barberini, which is the only known source for such an identification, but it omits the other annotations. The building has sometimes been identified, incorrectly, as the so-called Mausoleum of Romulus on the Via Appia just to the south of Rome near the Villa of Maxentius (e.g. Ashby 1904; Campbell, 2, pp. 599–600), seemingly because Francesco da Sangallo, in his annotation, had specified the location as being ‘at San Sebastiano’ (a S[ant]o Bastiano), a pilgrimage church that is close to the Via Appia (see also Cat. Fol. 5v/Ashby 9). The building depicted, however, cannot be the Mausoleum of Romulus because it is much too small. A scale on the Sangallo drawing indicates that the rotunda is 28 Florentine braccia (16m) in diameter whereas that of the Mausoleum of Romulus is more than twice that size and measures 57 braccia (33m). A more likely candidate is the similar but smaller mausoleum known as the Tor de’Schiavi at the Villa of the Gordians on the via Praenestina just to the east of the city (see Rasch 1993; LTUR Suburbium 2001–08, 3, pp. 31–39), which has a rotunda far closer in size, measuring 19.35m in diameter (Rasch 1993, plate 74A). In support of such an identification is the presence of the niches at the rear of the portico, which are still extant in the mausoleum at the Villa of the Gordians but absent in the Mausoleum of Romulus, since the main storey of this building (LTUR Suburbium 2001–08, 4, pp. 51–52) was probably never constructed. The fact that Francesco da Sangallo describes the dome as having a ‘light’ (lume), or opening, at the centre, which would make it unlike the dome of the Gordians’ mausoleum as recorded in drawings by Sallustio Peruzzi and Giovannantonio Dosio (Campbell 2004, pp. 306–07), can be accounted for if Francesco was copying an earlier drawing and had interpreted a circular field at the centre of the dome as an oculus. Such a copying process could well explain, too, how he was mistaken about the building’s location, given the general similarity between the structures.
RELATED IMAGES: [Francesco da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 43v (Hülsen 1910, 1, pp. 58–59; Borsi 1985, p. 59)
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Sallustio Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 668 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 121); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Windsor, RL, 19253r (Campbell 2004, 1, pp. 306–08)
OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 5v/Ashby 9
Literature
Ashby 1904, p. 14
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 599–601
Census, ID 50172
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 599–601
Census, ID 50172
Level
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