To an approximate scale of 1:180

[letter key] .C.; [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 nymphaeum originally fronting the Cortile’s upper terrace was executed and is still partly preserved beneath the early nineteenth-century Braccio Nuovo which now separates the upper terrace from the level in front and below it (Frommel 1998). It is the earliest known re-creation in the Renaissance of an ancient nymphaeum, and it must have been inspired in part by the nymphaeum of the Temple of Fortuna at Palestrina, which, like the Cortile’s nymphaeum, is positioned between ramped ascents, although the Palestrina ramps are not doubled as they are here. The Cortile’s nymphaeum had an apsed interior with pilasters and niches, and it was entered, as later images such as the topographical view of the Cortile by Giovanni Battista Naldini confirm, from a three-bay façade with a central arch, pilasters and side niches. This three-bay format was then repeated around the upper terrace’s perimeter.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giovanni Battista Naldini, formerly attributed to Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, GDSU, 2559 A (Ackerman 1954, pp. 216–17)

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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