To an approximate scale of 1:380

.tenplum. paneonis. (‘Temple of the Pantheon’)

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

This drawing, rotated clockwise when mounted to allow the building to appear as if resting on the ground, shows the east side of the Pantheon, which is identified in the caption as the ‘tenplum paneonis (with the erroneous omission of the ‘t’). The portico and transitional block are seen in a raking perspectival view which correctly shows how the frontal pediment runs awkwardly into the higher pediment behind it, and how the pilasters of the transitional block are irregularly spaced. The frontal columns and pilasters are depicted, moreover, as rising from a notional ground level, without any attempt to reconstruct any buried steps or platform, so common in earlier depictions (see Cat. Fol. 8r/Ashby 13). The rotunda is correctly depicted, too, as having its top storey pierced with rectangular openings, admittedly drawn too large but representing six out of what would have been sixteen in a full circumference, and the dome is accurately recorded as being girded by a plinth followed by six large steps (better scaled than in the black chalk underdrawing to the left). One oddity, however, is that there is a line running across the top-storey openings just under halfway up them, which makes little sense and has no parallel in the building as it exists. Another concerns the position of an access staircase on the dome’s extrados leading up to the oculus, which is reached from a mini double flight at the bottom. The drawing places this staircase above (more or less) the third upper-level aperture from the transitional block, which means it is on the transverse axis, whereas, in the actual building, there are two such staircases that are positioned on the diagonals towards the rear, as later recorded by Desgodetz (1682, pp. 16–17) – although another tradition gave the dome multiple staircase, including ones on the principal axes, as shown by Sebastiano Serlio in Book Three of his treatise first published in 1540.

As a side view that combines, for the portico and transitional block, orthogonal with perspectival elements, the drawing is unusual in that such a coupling is otherwise used in the codex mainly just for façades. As with these façade drawings, however, the perspectival components are drawn in steep recession, but allow the building, especially by an untutored eye, to be understood three-dimensionally. In this respect, the drawing has very few precedents or equivalents. Most other early representations of the exterior are records of the façade alone, such as the one in the Codex Escurialensis, which is unsurprising given that there was, and still is, no obvious vantage point for the flank to be viewed. The only comparable representations of the whole of the building from the side, apart from a copy by Amico Aspertini (for some reason reversed), is a late sixteenth-century copy drawing in Vienna, which similarly includes a raking view of the portico and, although much cruder and more diagrammatic, indicates that other similar depictions of the exterior had been produced beforehand. It is perhaps surprising that this Coner drawing of the exterior should come after views of the interior, and well before the main depiction of the façade (Fol. 38r/Ashby 61). This may suggest that the order in which the drawings were bound was not the one that was originally intended.

RELATED IMAGES: [Amico Aspertini] London, BM, Aspertini Sketchbook II, fol. 42v (Bober 1957, p. 89)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon. Italian G] Vienna, Albertina, inv. Egger no. 130r (Egger 1903, p. 42; Valori 1985, pp. 189–91); Serlio 1619, 3, fol. 51v

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 8r/Ashby 13; Fol. 23r/Ashby 35; Fol. 23v/Ashby 36; Fol. 24v/Ashby 38; Fol. 38r/Ashby 61; Fol. 38v/Ashby 62; Fol. 39r/Ashby 63; Fol. 40r/Ashby 65; Fol. 50v/Ashby 86; Fol. 65r/Ashby 111

Ashby 1904, p. 30
Census, ID 43440

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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