To an approximate scale of 1:430

[letter key] .B.; [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing records Bramante’s design for the exedra and circular staircase of the upper terrace, which were under construction from around 1509/10, and it corresponds fairly closely to the version included on the overall plan (Drawing 1). Abutting the Cortile delle Statue to its rear, the exedra is shown here as giving direct access to a space on the court’s eastern (right) side (now the Sala degli Animali), but a staircase to the west in the thickness of the wall does not correspond to what is depicted in the overall plan or in a French drawing of around 1520 at Windsor and may never have been realised. The exedra’s semi-circular rear wall, also recorded in other early images, was adorned with pairs of pilasters framing an alternation of rectangular recesses and niches, while the front was partly screened by spur walls extending from the frontages to either side. The staircase is shown as having four convex steps at the front, the same number indicated on the overall, plan, and then a much larger number of concave steps behind, an arrangement that is also seen in the French drawing. In another early drawing now in Rome, there are no frontal steps indicated, and this conceivably records a preliminary proposal. The much larger number of frontal steps seen in the plates of the exedra in Sebastiano Serlio’s treatise first published in 1540 (as well as in other images: see Ackerman 1954, pp. 202–03 and 210–11) may indicate a modification to the design, perhaps made once the difference in height between the upper terrace and the Cortile delle Statue had been accurately established.

Visually, the exedra was the most overtly all’antica element of Bramante’s Cortile scheme. Principally inspired by the theatre-like flight of steps near the summit of the Temple of Fortuna at Palestrina to the east of Rome, it appears to have also been informed by the apsidal halls facing onto the matching side-courtyards of the Baths of Caracalla (see Fol. 13r/Ashby 22), which, like the Cortlie exedra, are partly screened by spur walls and enriched internally with alternating recesses and alcoves. Having been completed under Baldassare Peruzzi in 1535, the exedra was subsequently transformed: a new rear wall was inserted, c.1550, to create a corridor behind it, the circular steps were replaced by a pair of matching flights, and an upper storey was built across the Cortile’s entire northern end; and then, in 1565, the remodelled exedra was vaulted by Pirro Ligorio and converted into today’s ‘Grand Niche’, or Nicchione (Ackerman 1954, pp. 74–77 and 88–90).

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Rome, ICG, Vol. 2510, fol. 79r (Günther 1988, p. 352 and pl. 76b); [Anon. French draughtsman] Windsor, RL, 10496r (Davies–Hemsoll 2013, 1, pp. 201–04); Serlio 1619, 3, fol. 119v

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: see Drawing 1

Ashby 1904, pp. 23–26
Ashby 1913, pp. 197–200
Ackerman 1954, pp. 193–95

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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