To an approximate scale of 1:150

[Drawing] Pianta d’vn tempio vicino à S./ Bastiano (‘Plan of a temple near the church of San Sebastiano’); 4 [early seventeenth-century hand] [Mount] 9 [x2]

• c.1625/35
  Date range: c.1625/35

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and pink-brown wash over black chalk and compass pricks; on half a double sheet of laid paper (232x331mm), rounded corners at left and right, inlaid [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (224x159mm)

Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist)

See Fol. 5r and flap/Ashby 8

This seventeenth-century addition to the codex most probably represents the mausoleum at the Villa of the Gordians on the Via Praenestina that is known as the Tor de’Schiavi. It is the basement counterpart to the plan of the main level by the same draughtsman that appears earlier in the codex (Fol. 4r/Ashby 6). Although they are now several folios apart in the album, they were on adjacent and facing sheets in the original compilation (as is established by the original foliation numbering.

Both drawings were copied from plans by Francesco da Sangallo that are arranged side by side in the Codex Barberini. Although the building was misidentified by Francesco (see Cat. Fol. 4r/Ashby 6), the related plans as copied in the Codex Coner, are both consistent with the Tor de’Schiavi, this one combining a circular, vaulted space with the basement for a portico, but such an identification is still not wholly certain. In favour of the building being the Tor de’Schiavi is that the measurements provided by Francesco are much closer to those of the Tor de’Schiavi than those of the building that Francesco claimed it to be, the Mausoleum of Romulus at the Villa of Maxentius on the Via Appia. Supporting the same identification are the transverse corridors shown beneath the portico, which are found in this mausoleum but not in the Mausoleum of Romulus, which has piers under the portico floor, as illustrated for example by Sebastiano Serlio in Book Three of his treatise (first published 1540). More problematic, however, is the design of the circular area behind in having alternating rectangular and semi-circular niches, which is more like the Mausoleum of Romulus than the Tor de’Schiavi, where the corresponding space is unarticulated, as seen in drawings of this building by Giovannantonio Dosio and Sallustio Peruzzi. It could be, therefore, that the drawing is a hybrid, and that Francesco was copying a drawing that was not adequately identified, and modifying the plan to make it conform more with a structure that he knew.

The Coner copy also duplicates a mistake in the original. Francesco had originally decided to make the ‘rectangular’ niches inside the rotunda deeper, and had marked this depth in his drawing, before changing his mind and reducing the size, and the Coner drawing duly records these alterations. Further mistakes were introduced by the Coner copyist himself, who was clearly untutored in architectural drawing: in Francesco’s original, the rectangular niches all have sides that are radial and thus splayed, whereas, in the copy, only those on the main axis are treated in this way, with those on the cross axis being parallel-sided.

RELATED IMAGES: [Francesco da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 43v (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 59; Borsi 1985, pp. 214-15)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giovannantonio Dosio] Windsor, RL 19253r (Campbell 2004, 1, pp. 306–09); [Sallustio Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 668 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 121; Rasch 1993, plate 2, ill. 3); Serlio 1619, fol. 69r

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 4r/Ashby 6

Ashby 1904, p. 15
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 606–07
Census, ID 48125

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