To an approximate scale of 1:600

[Drawing] .TENPLI. PACIS. (‘Of the Temple of Peace’); .totum est. b. 104. (‘The whole is 104 braccia); [measurements] [Mount] 16 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over black chalk, stylus lines and compass points; on laid paper (160x229mm), trimmed (rounded corners absent, formerly at bottom); inlaid (sheet rotated anticlockwise through 90 degrees with respect to original foliation) [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (152x223mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

See recto

This plan is of the building, located east of the Roman Forum, known today as either the Basilica of Maxentius or the Basilica of Constantine, which was begun in 306 CE by the Emperor Maxentius and completed by his successor Constantine (LTUR 1993–2000, 1, pp. 170–73; Amici 2005). In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, it was generally known as the ‘Temple of Peace’, hence the drawing’s caption, which is composed in antique-inspired capitals. Following a catastrophic earthquake in 1349, much of the building collapsed with little more surviving than is visible today, around a third of the original structure consisting mainly of just the north-eastern side aisle (at right) made up of three enormous and interconnecting barrel-vaulted compartments. The missing parts are the matching southwestern aisle and the enormous cross-vaulted area in between – the largest such space ever constructed in antiquity – although the general outline of the original three-aisled design could still be determined when the Coner plan was produced. Since the middle of the fifteenth century, the building had become one of special interest, and, on account of its grandeur and perhaps its association with ‘Peace’, it provided the designers of the new church of St Peter’s, from Bernardo Rossellino in the 1450s onwards, with one of its principal models (Campbell 1981).

The Coner plan is a partial reconstruction, which was remarkably well-understood for its date. It shows all three aisles and indicates the positions in the central aisle of the eight engaged columns, only one of which had survived (removed in 1613 to the front of Santa Maria Maggiore: see Fol. 37r/Ashby 59), as well as the position in the end apse (at top) of a pedestal for the statue of the emperor Constantine (partly rediscovered c.1487; Platner–Ashby 1926, p. 77). It also includes a spiral staircase near the structure’s northern corner (admittedly not in precisely the correct position: see Amici 2006) as well as showing the exterior there fairly accurately as having an irregular projection. Especially notable is the inclusion of a curving retaining wall outside the north-eastern exedra (at right), a feature that does not appear in other Renaissance drawings but is sometimes shown in modern archaeological surveys (Amici 2005, p. 37). The outer parts of the frontal south-eastern wall (at bottom) are left undefined, a typical technique used in the Codex Coner to express uncertainty, and no outer porch is conjectured. However, despite all this apparent care in representing only what could be seen, the plan incorrectly includes certain features for which there is little or no evidence: an exedra in the southwestern aisle (at left) to match the extant one in the north-eastern aisle, a row of columns screening the end exedra, and trios of small niches inserted into the larger arches of the first bay of the north-eastern aisle’s side wall, which are omitted from the elevation of this building found a little later in the codex (Fol. 37r/Ashby 59). Why these features should have been included is puzzling, but they were likely derived from now-lost earlier drawings.

Among the Coner drawing’s immediate predecessors, as noted by Ashby, is the one produced by Giuliano da Sangallo in the Codex Barberini, which is like it in showing all three aisles, in adding an extra exedra to the south-eastern range, in recording the plinth of the statue in the end apse, and in omitting a porch. Yet, despite their similarities, the Coner plan is certainly not a copy of the Barberini drawing since the given measurements are so different, and many of the Barberini drawing’s errors are rectified. For example, it makes the niches flanking the end apse all the same width, it records the north-eastern exedra correctly as having nine rather than five low-level niches, and it shows piers rather than columns at the entrance into the central aisle. It also corrects (as is evident in a pentimento) the wall of the north-western exedra, making it much less thick than the walls to either side; and it departs from the Barberini drawing in suggesting uncertainty about the porch, since the latter drawing, by adding engaged columns to the entrance wall, implied there was no porch at all.

Some of the Coner drawing’s peculiarities are found in other early drawings. Its inclusion of trios of small niches in the first bay of the north-western aisle suggests some connection with subsequent drawings by Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo and Palladio, which have similar niches in the two outer bays. The column screen of in the northern exedra finds a parallel likewise in the drawing by Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo, except that the columns are replaced there by piers, and an even closer equivalent in a drawn reconstruction by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, which has the column screen repeated in the southwestern exedra. As for the building’s unresolved south-eastern end, this would later be interpreted as a porch in later drawings and prints by Peruzzi, Serlio and Palladio.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 63v (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 68; Borsi 1985, pp. 223–26); [Antonio da Sangallo the Elder] Florence, GDSU, 7800 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 30); [Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1648 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 96; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, pp. 195–96); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 3978 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 55); Serlio 1619, fol. 58v; [Andrea Palladio] London, RIBA, Palladio XV, 3 (Zorzi 1959, p. 78); Palladio 1570, 4, p. 12.

OTHER IMAGES IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 39r/Ashby 59

Ashby 1904, p. 17
Census, ID 44042

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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