To an approximate scale of 1:60

[Verso] 30 [early seventeenth-century hand] [Mount] 33 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14 with later additions

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown and light brown wash over stylus lines; on laid paper (232x160mm), trimmed (rounded corners absent, formerly at left), inlaid (back-to-front with respect to original foliation, window on verso of mount) [Verso] Blank [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart [Verso of mount] Window (224x156mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia and seventeenth-century hand

[Drawing] Anchor in circle topped with six-pointed star (variant 2; cut at right edge) [Mount] Fleur-de-lys in circle surmounted with crown (variant 2; cut by bottom edge of window)

This depiction of the exterior of Bramante’s celebrated Tempietto (for which, see Cat. Fol. 12v/Ashby 21) was clearly executed by two hands. Most of the drawing is the work of Bernardo della Volpaia, except that he did not finish the dome. He was certainly expecting to do so as there is a stylus line representing the curvature of the dome’s exterior and additional vertical lines indicating the width limits of the lantern; but why he left the drawing unfinished in unknown. Perhaps there was some uncertainty over the precise external form of the dome, which may not have completed by the time the drawing was made. The stylus lines were then utilised to complete the drawing by a seventeenth-century draughtsman, who employed a different, browner ink, comparable in colour with the other seventeenth-century additions to the codex, and a pen with a coarser nib. The difference in the hands is also revealed in the less refined and precise delineation there of the architecture, which is especially evident in the treatment of the lantern, the design of which was based roughly on the sectional drawing of the building on the once-facing page (Fol. 22r/Ashby 34).

Bar the later addition, the drawing is among the earliest surviving representations of the Tempietto. It largely corresponds to the structure as built in having a central domed space raised on a small podium interrupted by a set of steps leading to the entrance, and having a peripteral colonnade of sixteen columns with respondent pilasters behind them, and then a Doric entablature with three metopes in each of the colonnade’s external bays. Certain differences, however, suggest that the drawing was based not on the building itself but on a preparatory scheme produced before the final design was completely settled. One concerns the balustrade which has fewer balusters than the one constructed, three per bay instead of four, making a complete circuit of forty-eight balusters rather than sixty-four. It also makes the balusters in the drawing equal in number to the triglyphs in the frieze, with each triglyph beneath a baluster, unlike those belonging to the structure as built, which align with the triglyphs only above the columns. An early drawing in the Uffizi, identical in this respect, could have been based, therefore, on the same early project. Other differences relate to the level above the colonnade where sixteen pilaster strips frame an alternating sequence of rectangular windows and niches. Unlike the building as it exists, the pilaster strips do not have recessed panels and the niches have impost mouldings, both of which may again be indicative of late changes made to the design, while the upper entablature is left plain rather than having corbels – although such simplification is common among Coner elevational drawings. One further difference is connected with a design change that was made soon after the building’s completion. At some very early date, side steps on the building’s cross axis were cut very crudely into the podium (Schuller 2017, p. 229). These are not shown on this drawing or on the Coner plan (Fol. 12v/Ashby 21), and they are not shown either on other early plans now in Rome, although they are recorded in a later representation of the building from the mid- sixteenth century by Giovannantonio Dosio.

The drawing shows the building as being rather squatter than it actually is – a characteristic of many of the Coner drawings – but a misrepresentation that is not repeated in the more proportionally accurate section on the following page (Fol. 22r/Ashby 34). The viewpoint is set higher than it is when seen from ground level, but not as high as other drawings in the compilation. The drawing gives no measurements, perhaps because these are provided on the section, which suggests that the two drawings were conceived as complementing each other. It remained unfinished not only above the upper cornice, but also at the right edge where part of the peripteros is missing. The drawing is the first in the original compilation of elevational depictions of buildings, preceding even those of the Pantheon.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 4 Av (Günther 2008, pp. 76-85; Cantatore 2017, p. 388); [Anon.] Rome, ICG, GN 2510, fols 33r and 42v; (Günther 1988, pp. 68-79, 349-352; Cantatore ed. 2017, pp. 386-87); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, GDSU, 2041 Av (Cantatore ed. 2017, p. 396)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 12v/Ashby 21; Fol. 22r/Ashby 34; Fol. 40r/Ashby 65

Ashby 1904, p. 29
Günther 1973, p. 181
Nesselrath 1992, pp. 145-46

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.

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk