To an approximate scale of 1:100

[Drawing] Pianta del Setizonio (‘Plan of the Septizodium’); 3 [early seventeenth-century hand] [Mount] 7 [x2]

• c.1625/35
  Date range: c.1625/35

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and pink-brown wash over compass pricks; on laid paper (229x158mm), stitching holes along left edge, trimmed (rounded corners absent, formerly at right), inlaid [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (222x152mm)

Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist)

See recto

Added to the codex in the seventeenth century, this drawing is identified by an inscription as being an idealised plan of the Septizodium, a building that once stood at the foot of the far south-eastern corner of the Palatine Hill fronting the Palatine Palace up above it (Lusnia 2004). Only one corner of the structure had survived the predations of the Middle Ages but, with its three-storey elevation, it remained an impressive landmark until its demolition in 1589. As is clear from many sixteenth-century topographical views such as the one of 1546 engraved by Antonio Lafreri, this fragment was just four bays wide, the three at the extremity standing forward of a fourth that once formed part of a continuing elevation, which is now known to have extended a very great distance leftwards to include various colonnaded exedrae (Lusnia 2004; see also Thomas 2007).

The plan drawn here is very different in layout. At the front, the surviving four-bay portion of the elevation is mirrored, and an extra bay is added in the middle to join the two matching halves and create an overall composition of nine bays in width. This frontal composition is then mirrored by an identical but wholly fictitious arrangement at the back, with sides similarly of nine bays in extent and enough space between the two fronts for a pair of shallow U-shaped interiors containing staircases that are separated from each other by two rows of columns. The nine-by-nine-bay plan takes no account of the steeply rising terrain of the actual site. Instead, it is closely based on one of two idealised reconstructions of the plan drawn by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Barberini sketchbook. The first is a ‘half’ plan’ which would provide the basis for later renditions of the building published by Sebastiano Serlio (first issued in 1540) and Bartolomeo Marliani, while the other (fol. 29v) is the even more implausible ‘full’ or square plan that is reproduced here. The Coner copy, however, shows abundant signs of the draughtsman’s inexperience (Campbell 2004). The columns are much thinner than in the original and the use of wash makes the drawing difficult to read, the plinths being filled with wash, like the walls but unlike the column shafts, and the internal steps being alternately left blank or given a wash infill. Also different are the projections on the back walls of the shallow U-shaped interior structures, which in the Sangallo drawing are rough and uneven but in the copy are much more regular, and more like pilasters responding to the columns facing them.

Although there was no drawing in the original sixteenth-century Coner compilation of the entire Septizodium, a measured detail was included of the cornice of its podium (Fol. 68r/Ashby 116). Why the building was not documented more fully is unclear, but it may be that a more complete survey of the surviving remains was intended but had still not been accomplished when work on the sketchbook’s production was curtailed.

RELATED IMAGES: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 29v (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 45; Borsi 1985, pp. 157–63)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 30r (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 45; Borsi 1985, pp. 157–63); Serlio 1619, fol. 87v; Marliani 1544, p. 68; [Antonio Lafreri], in Speculum romanae magnificentiae (Hülsen 1921, p. 151, no. 40a)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 68r/Ashby 116

Ashby 1904, p. 14
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 602–03
Census, ID 43906

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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