To an approximate scale of 1:60

[Drawing] .SVPRA. MO[N]T/EM. AVREO. (‘Above Montorio [golden mount]’); [numerous measurements]; 31 [early seventeenth-century hand] [Mount]: 34 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks; on laid paper (232x167mm), fraying at left edge, rounded corners at right, inlaid (window on verso of mount) [Verso] Blank [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart [Verso of mount] Window (225x160)

Bernardo della Volpaia

[Drawing] None [Mount] None

This perspectival section of Bramante’s celebrated Tempietto (see Cat. Fol. 12v/Ashby 21 for the building history) is again among the earliest representations of the building to survive. It shows a domed, two-storey core, surrounded by a peripteral circuit of Doric columns capped with a balustrade, and it records fairly faithfully the discrepancies between the interior and exterior storeys, the lower one taller on the inside than the outside, and the upper one rising to a lower point on the inside than on the outside. The drawing is not identical to the actual building, however, in various respects. Absent are the steps cut through the podium on the cross axis (at the right in the drawing), which were evidently added after initial construction (see Cat. Fol. 21r/Ashby 33 Drawing 1). Also absent is the window above the door at the centre, which could imply that the scheme represented had four upper windows and not eight, perhaps the result of copying an early discarded scheme, or of a misreading of the drawing being copied, or more simply of a desire simply to insert an identifying pseudo-antique inscription in this position. The dome is then shown as rising directly from the drum’s entablature and not from a band above it, which it does as a result of changes to the building made in 1605 (Cantatore 2017c, pp. 168–69).

Corresponding closely in its dimensions to the building as built, the drawing differs from the plan found earlier in the codex (Fol. 12v/Ashby 21), making the interior diameter 7 braccia 13 minutes as opposed to 6 braccia 48 minutes. This discrepancy suggests that the section was reliant on a scheme for the building that was closer to the version finally executed. The measurements themselves are distributed in accordance with a system that separates vertical and horizontal dimensions so as not to disfigure the drawing too much, which is also seen elsewhere in the codex such as in the drawing of the Arch of Constantine (see Fol. 33r/Ashby 53). Thus, the column at the left is annotated with vertical measurements, whereas the one at the right is given horizontal ones, which include diameters of the shaft taken at six separate levels to allow understanding of the way that it tapers towards the top, like columns shown in drawings on a later page (Fol. 41v/Ashby 68).

The drawing is not a true cross section but amalgamates different sectional elements, so that that the left and right halves are not identical as would normally be expected (see Raspe 2000). The right half slices through a bottom-storey door that is set into an exedra, as one might expect of a section along the transverse axis, whereas the left half cuts through a shell-capped niche that is found in an adjacent bay. A similar lack of bilateral symmetry is also seen in the upper level, except that the left side shows the arrangement on the transverse axis by running through a window whereas the right side depicts a shell-capped niche in a bay next to it. The intention here, presumably, was to show more information about the design than could be included in a simple section, thus obviating a need for additional drawings. It is an approach to representation seen elsewhere in the codex, most notably in a sectional drawing of the Pantheon which comes soon afterwards (Fol. 23v/Ashby 36), but here the approach is far from consistent, which makes the drawing difficult to read. At the lower level the door which lies on the transverse axis is shown on the right side whereas, at the upper level of the drum, the window which lies on the same transverse axis is shown on the left side. What was drawn may have simply been the result of a conceptual muddle, and, in any case, it would have been easy to clarify any confusions with reference to the drawing of the building’s exterior, which was originally on the page facing it.

Among the other perspectival sections of the Tempietto dating from the sixteenth century, some show just half the interior (e.g. those in the Mellon Codex and by Aristotile da Sangallo and Raffaello da Montelupo), some show all of it (drawings in the Uffizi and Kassel and a woodcut by Bernardo Gamucci), while yet others combine sections with elevations (e.g. one in Rome and another first published by Sebastiano Serlio in 1540. None, however, is closely related to the Coner drawing, and none combines different sections into a single image.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Rome, ICG, Vol. 2510, fol. 42v (Günther 1988, p. 352 and pl. 76a); [Domenico Aimo (Il Varignana), attr.] New York, Morgan Library, Codex Mellon, fol. 60v); [Aristotile da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 4319 Ar (Ghisetti Giavarina 1990, p. 90); [Raffaello da Montelupo, attr.] Lille, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille Sketchbook), fol. 10v (Lemerle 1997, pp. 292–93); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, GDSU, 2042 (Cantatore 2017, p. 396); [Anon.] Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Graphische Sammlung, Kassel Codex, fol. 20r (Günther 1988, p. 372 and pl. 117b); Serlio 1619, fols 68r–v; Gamucci 1569, fol. 176r.

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 12v/Ashby 21; Fol. 21r/Ashby 33; Fol. 40r/Ashby 65

Ashby 1904, p. 29
De Angelis d’Ossat 1951, pp. 94-98
Günther 1973, p. 181
Raspe 2000

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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