To the approximate scale of 1:240

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks

Bernardo della Volpaia

This section through half of the Temple of Portunus at Porto complements the plan drawn above it. Enough of the building’s cella still survives even today for it to be clear that it originally had a ribbed and webbed dome, with the eight ribs supported by engaged columns beneath (Testaguzza 1970, p. 217), which is what is shown in this drawing, even though the building itself may have already been fragmentary. Less certain, however, is the recess shown within the web. There are undoubtedly depressions in the centres of the webs seen in the surviving fabric, but it is unclear whether these are deliberate design features or the results of centuries of weather damage. As for the peripteros, this is shown in the drawing as supporting a vault, which conforms with the surviving structure still bearing the traces of cross-vaulting, although whether cross-vaulting or barrel-vaulting is shown in the drawing is unclear.

In reconstructing the building with a peripteros, the Coner drawing departs from the earlier reconstruction of Giuliano da Sangallo, and it anticipates the later one of Antonio da Sangallo, except that Antonio encircled the building with just columns rather than columns and piers. It also departs from Giuliano’s reconstruction in showing the structure ringed by two steps rather than standing on a podium, which it is now known to have done, and which was also suggested in Giuliano’s drawing.

Despite being rendered in orthogonal projection (save for the base and capital of the one depicted internal column), the drawing is not a straightforward cross section. The slice across cella cuts through one of the semi-circular niches on the diagonal axes, and, if the drawing were a simple cross section, it would also run between one of the pairs of columns on the periphery, but this is not what is shown. The slice through the peripteros cuts instead through a pier and is thus displaced in respect to the internal section. The same composite type of section is seen elsewhere in the codex, most notably in depictions of the Tempietto (Fol. 22r/Ashby 34) and the Pantheon (Fol. 23v/Ashby 36). This hybrid mode served as a means of incorporating as much information as possible into a single drawing.

The section was added to the sheet after the plan was finished and was inserted into the available space at its bottom, which explains why it is turned on its side. Incomplete where it meets the plan, it was presumably left as it was so that the two drawings would not run into each other, and not because of any uncertainty over what it would look like if completed. The overall page composition is similar to those of Santa Costanza (Fol. 12r/Ashby 20) and the so-called Temple of Vesta at Tivoli (Fol. 14v/Ashby 24) and may well reflect a deliberate strategy of juxtaposition for the depictions of ancient round buildings. This section, however, is a fifth smaller in scale than the plan, which makes it unlike other sections in the codex which are larger than the accompanying plans, and suggests that its size was determined by the available space.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 37r (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 54; Borsi 1985, pp. 194–96); [Antonio da Sangallo the Younger] Florence, GDSU, 1414 Ar (Vasori 1981, pp. 153–55; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, pp. 185–86)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 7v/Ashby 12 (Drawing 1 on this page); Fol. 24r/Ashby 37

Ashby 1904, p. 15
Ashby 1913, p. 191
Census, ID 44026

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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