To an approximate scale of 1:150

TEMPLV[M]. DE. TIBV/ RE (‘Temple of Tivoli’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

The round temple at Tivoli, some 30 km east of Rome, is perched on the acropolis high above the gorge of the River Aniene, a tributary of the Tiber (Giuliani 1970, pp. 132–43). It was – and still is – known as the Temple of Vesta, the name given to it in an elevational drawing in Montreal of around 1530, or, alternatively, the Temple of the Sibyl, as it is called in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini, the sibyl being the local Tiburtine Sibyl. Here, however, it is identified in pseudo-antique capitals just as the ‘Temple in Tivoli’.

The plan, among the earliest surviving representations of the building, is largely accurate in showing it as a round peripteral building with a circuit of eighteen columns, positioned at the edge of a circular podium (see Drawing 3), and in recording the cella (internally 12 braccia wide) as being half the diameter of the whole structure (24 braccia wide). It correctly places the windows in the third bays from the entrance portal, rather than in the second as shown in the Codex Barberini, but it aligns them with the colonnade’s intercolumniations whereas in reality they are displaced a little further to one side (cf. Desgodetz 1682, p. 89). It gives the correct measurement for the portal’s width, but it depicts the portal incorrectly, making the opening narrower than it should be, while it shows the windows incorrectly in placing their jambs at the fronts of the openings rather than the backs (as shown correctly in the Sangallo plan). As for the measurements, those in the Coner drawing differ from Sangallo’s, in generally being more accurate, confirming that the Barberini plan was not the source. Unlike other early drawings, moreover, it notes that the intercolumniation corresponding to the central portal is slightly wider than the others (2¾ as opposed to 2⅔ braccia). Although the actual columns here are missing, such a differentiation would be in line with the principle given by Vitruvius that the intercolumniation corresponding with the door of a temple should be the widest (De architectura, Book Three, chapter 6). Later drawings of the building disagree mainly as regards the window placement. Some such as the one published by Serlio in his treatise (first issued in 1540) follow the format of the Coner drawing and show the windows precisely at the centres of the third intercolumniations. Others position them directly behind the third columns such as a plan of the building in Montreal, or almost behind them, as seen in a drawing in Berlin.

The plan and the accompanying section (Drawing 3) are likely to derive from the same source as the drawings of details of the same building later in the codex, since the one of the portal (Fol. 20r/Ashby 32 Drawing 2) is given an identical width.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 42r (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 58; Borsi 1985, p. 211; [Anon.] Montreal, CCA, Roman Sketchbook, fols 21r (cutaway view) and fol. 22r (plan); Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, HdZ 4151, fol. 70r; Serlio 1619, fol. 60v.

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 14v/Ashby 24 (Drawing 3 on this page); Fol. 20r/Ashby 32; Fol. 53v/Ashby 92

Ashby 1904, p. 23
Census, ID 44227

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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