To an approximate scale of 1:30

finestra. intus. T[enpli]. tibu/ris (‘Window on the inside of the temple of Tivoli’); finestra. foras. eiusdem./ tenpli (‘Window on the outside of the same temple’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

This drawing, one of several of the so-called Temple Vesta at Tivoli, records the building’s surviving window, famous for its unusual form that tapers towards the top, which is found to the right of the entrance portal (its partner to the left being no longer extant). It consists of two halves, the right-hand portion depicting the outer face which has a two-fascia architrave (albeit not indicated) that rests on a sill with a recessed panel, and a cornice above, and the left-hand portion showing the rather different inner face which has no differentiated sill and, instead, a continuous architrave given idiosyncratic ‘ears’ projecting sideways at both top and bottom and supporting a taller cornice. The two halves are joined at the middle, with each carefully identified by an annotation, and together they show that the inner frame is rather larger and grander in conception than the outer one. The two halves are also represented to different degrees of detail, such that the inner architrave on the left is shown with all its mouldings whereas the outer one on the right is not. Neither of the cornices is drawn in, being simply indicated in outline with their height dimensions added. Although accurate in most respects, the drawing has certain errors. As Ashby noted, the window tapers a little too much, and too much in respect to the specified measurements. In addition, the openings of the two halves of the window are represented as identical in size, whereas in reality the opening of the inner face (left) is a little smaller than the outer one (right) since the aperture has a rebate. The drawing is of around the same scale as the one of the temple door shown beside it (Drawing 2).

The drawing is close in certain respects to the depictions of the window Giuliano da Sangallo (or his son Francesco) included in the Codex Barberini. There, the two faces are separately drawn on adjacent folios to the same scale, and, like the Coner depiction, the architrave on the inner face has all its mouldings shown whereas that on the outer face has them omitted, and, like it too, no account is taken of the rebate which makes the opening taller and wider on the outside than on the inside. This could well suggest that the two Barberini drawings provided models for the Coner depiction, and that they were simply combined into a single image, except that the measurements do not correspond. The Sangallo drawing gives the width at the top of the window as 1 braccio, 13 soldi and 6 denarii, which is equivalent to 1 braccio 39½ minutes in the measuring system used in the Codex Coner, whereas the Coner drawing gives it as 1 braccio 40 minutes. It could well be, therefore, that the measurements were the result of a different survey, and they were simply applied to the Coner drawing.

The Coner drawing was partly copied by Michelangelo, but he omitted the right-hand side and only recorded the left-hand side showing the inner face with its projecting ‘ears’. His drawing presumably provided the principal source for the high-level windows of his New Sacristy which he designed in the 1520s, and which similarly taper and likewise have projecting ears. It is unclear why the drawing is located in this position in the codex, but one possibility is that it was originally intended – long before the codex was bound – to be associated with an elevation or section of the temple, which would have made its place more understandable as it would have been immediately followed by drawings of another round peripteral structure, namely Bramante’s Tempietto.

RELATED IMAGES: [Giuliano or Francesco da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fols 42v–43r (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 58; Borsi 1985, pp. 211–13); [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 8Ar: left side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 46; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 104–05)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 14v/Ashby 24; Fol. 20r/Ashby 32 (Drawing 2 on this page); Fol. 53v/Ashby 92

Ashby 1904, pp. 28–29
Census, ID 44277

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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