To an approximate scale of 1:220

[Drawing].SANTI./ .CELSI. (‘Of the church of San Celso’); [measurements]; 12 [early seventeenth-century hand] [Mount] 18 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks; on laid paper (232x166mm), stitching holes along left edge, rounded corners at right, inlaid (window on verso of mount) [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart

Bernardo della Volpaia

[Drawing] None [Mount] None

Identified by the caption (in antique-inspired capitals) as San Celso (or more correctly Santi Celso e Giuliano), this church was rebuilt as a consequence of Pope Julius II’s decision to redevelop the Canale di Ponte, a road leading to the southern end of the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Given the importance of this thoroughfare as the principal means of access to the Borgo Vaticano and as the location of several major banking houses, the width of the street leading to and from the bridge was doubled, requiring the redevelopment of its eastern side and the demolition of the medieval church of San Celso. The church was to be replaced by one of reduced size, providing space for shops at the front (Bruschi 1969, pp. 980–85), and the project was already underway by January 1510. Although Vasari makes no mention of the church in his life of Bramante the design is attributed to him in the Anonimo Gaddiano of 1542/48 (Bruschi 1969, pp. 980–85). The building was never completed and was replaced by a new church in the eighteenth century.

The plan takes the form of a Greek cross inscribed within a square with four large projecting apses, one for the entrance. At the centre is a crossing with chamfered piers designed to support a dome that is wider than the nave, while at the corners there are smaller domed spaces (one dome indicated top right), which with their mini apses are like miniature versions of the plan as a whole. In these regards, the design is a simplified reworking of Bramante’s centralised scheme for St Peter’s, as depicted in his celebrated Parchment Plan in the Uffizi (see Cat. Fol. 19r/Ashby 31). It differs from its model, however, by being effectively hidden from external view by the four shops shown at the bottom of the drawing, and so – as shown here – it would not have had a façade and would thus have been rather akin to the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso which is incorporated into the Palazzo della Cancelleria (Fol. 32r/Ashby 51). Access is provided via a vestibule with an outer door which is not distinguished from the shop fronts to either side and is precisely the same width (7⅕ braccia). Except for the side facing the street, the church’s external perimeter is not delineated, perhaps because it was not properly indicated on the drawing that was being copied.

The Coner drawing has long been connected with the church. Identified as such by Ashby, it was regarded a copy of a project drawing by Dagobert Frey (1915). As perhaps the earliest surviving rendition of the project, it is likely to have been based on another drawing, as is normal practice in the codex, rather than on a site survey, since very little of the church was complete in 1513/14. Being so early and so carefully executed, it is often regarded as a representing Bramante’s definitive scheme, but this is far from certain, since Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Bramante’s assistant, was making drawings for the church in the years around 1513 and so the Coner drawing could just be one variant of the scheme then under consideration. Two drawings (GDSU 1859 A r–v) by Antonio were certainly produced early in his career to judge from the handwriting on them (Frommel in Frommel–Adams 2000, pp. 258–59), and these are for elevations with shops separated by pilasters that correspond closely to the Coner plan except that the entrance bay now has engaged columns.

Other drawings showing more substantial changes to the design are perhaps later. One in the Codex Mellon, albeit rather less precise in its handling, differs in several ways: the shops are removed and the church is given a facade of eight half-columns framing niches, with sacristies behind, accessed from the domed corner spaces; the vestibule at the church’s entrance is also dispensed with and the entrance apse seen in the Coner drawing transformed into a rectangular space; the circular staircase at the back of the church is discarded; and the whole building is given a neat external perimeter – although this may have just been added to ‘complete’ the drawing. Another plan in Rome is similar, but it retains the entrance apse and the separate vestibule. More radical are later drawings from the workshop of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger that recast the building as a free-standing structure with a three-bay entrance portico and with less grand portals on the cross axis, perhaps belonging to a later project to complete the church probably dating to before the death of the patron Paris de Grassis in 1524 (see Günther 1982, pp. 91–98, and Günther 1984, pp. 173–78).

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Bramante] Florence, GDSU, 1 Ar (Parchment Plan) (Bruschi 1969, pp. 885–94); [Domenico Aimo (Il Varignana), attr.] New York, Morgan Library, Codex Mellon, fol. 56v; [Anon.] Rome, ICG, Vol. 2510, fol. 24 (Günther 1988, p. 351 and pl. 69b); [Antonio da Sangallo the Younger] Florence, GDSU, 875 Ar–v, 1859 Ar–v, 4037 Ar (Frommel–Adams 2000, pp. 173–74, 258–59)

Ashby 1904, pp. 18–19
Ashby 1913, pp. 192–93
Thoenes 1966, pp. 29-45
Bruschi 1969, pp. 984
Günther 1984, p. 233
Günther 1988, pp. 338 and 351

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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