To an approximate scale of 1:330

.HICNOGRAPHIA./ .TENPLA[RUM]. SOLIS./ .ET LVNAE. (‘Plan of the Temples of the Sun and Moon’); [measurements]

• 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

The Temple of Venus and Rome, which stands east of the Roman Forum between the Basilica of Maxentius and the Colosseum, was initially built under the Emperor Hadrian, reportedly to his own design, and was dedicated in 135 CE (LTUR 1993–2000, 5, pp. 121–23; Del Monti 2010). Following a fire in 307 CE, it was partly reconstructed under Maxentius, which was when the temple’s two abutting interiors were vaulted and refaced. Not until the seventeenth century was it realised that this part-surviving structure was just the core of much larger building (see Nardini 1666, pp. 130–31) standing on a stylobate and surrounded, as it is now known, by twin files of enormous sixty-foot marble columns. During the Middle Ages, perhaps after sustaining damage from an earthquake, the western portion of the temple was adapted to accommodate the church of Santa Maria Nova (now Santa Francesca Romana). In the Renaissance period, the ancient building was widely known as the Temple of the Sun and Moon, as is stated here in the caption written in antique-style capitals, the correct dedication being first deduced by Famiano Nardini and published in his Roma Antica of 1666 (pp. 130–31; Campbell 2004, 3, p. 809).

The Coner drawing records the structure and its matching interiors far more accurately than an earlier plan by Francesco di Giorgio of around 1480, and it corresponds closely to the one by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini. Sangallo’s plan, however, takes the form of a conjectural reconstruction of the building, the twin temples having fully enclosed interiors preceded by wholly invented porticoes at their entrances. The Coner plan, by contrast, appears to record only what could be deduced about the building from its surviving state, omitting not only the porticoes but the two front walls as well, and leaving the structure open at both ends. In this respect it accords with a topographical view by Giovannantonio Dosio (c.1550/65) of the eastern end of the building, which shows the then-extant north wall and the part-surviving south wall, both ending abruptly at the front. The Coner plan also differs from the Barberini drawing by including, next to the back-to-back interior apses, just one internal staircase rather than a matching pair, and by leaving the corresponding area on the opposite side blank and indeterminate, a convention used in other Coner drawings to indicate a zone about which nothing was known. Neither drawing, however, depicts the staircase’s layout at all accurately, to judge from a plan detail on a slightly later sheet by Baldassare Peruzzi of c.1519, recording observations made on site, and showing one of the staircases to be square rather than rectangular in layout, and confined to an area immediately adjacent to one rather than both of the apses; and a similar arrangement is also documented in an anonymous drawing in the Uffizi from a later time. In a final departure from the Barberini plan, the Coner drawing shows an opening between the two abutting apses, this also indicated in the later Uffizi drawing, although not in the plan later published by Palladio in his Quattro libri. Some sort of aperture is likewise seen there in the Dosio view, which confirms there was once evidence of such an opening – even though this can no longer be detected in the structure’s semi-restored condition.

In most other respects the Coner plan follows its Barberini counterpart very closely. The articulation of the side walls, for example, with pairs of free-standing columns between the niches is identical (both differing from the correct interpretation by Peruzzi of c.1519 and the later incorrect one of Palladio), and the two plans bear very similar measurements, except that the Codex Coner gives the interior a width of 35⅔ braccia whereas the Codex Barberini gives it as 35⅓ braccia. The correspondences, nevertheless, are close enough to suggest that the two plans were based on the same original survey, with the building then being re-scrutinised for the Coner drawing.

RELATED IMAGES: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol 70r (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 72); Borsi 1985, pp. 239–42)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Francesco di Giorgio] Turin, Bibllioteca Reale, Codex Saluzziano 148, addendum, fol. 79r (Maltese 1967, p. 280); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 479 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 44; Wurm 1984, p. 409); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 4114 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 36); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, GDSU, 2561 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 136); Palladio 1570, 4, p. 37

Ashby 1904, p. 22
Günther 1988, p. 338
Census, ID 50572

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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