To an approximate scale of 1:18

.ad tiburem. (‘At Tivoli’)

• c.1515
  Datable to c.1515

Pen and brown ink and over black chalk

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing shows part of the elaborately decorated frame of either a window or door. With a cornice supported on brackets (one shown), it is similar to a portal depicted iin another Coner drawing (Fol. 53r/Ashby 91), the cornice itself having running wave decoration with its crowning cyma having foliate ornament, the frieze adorned with leaves, and the cushion-like frame of the opening embellished with acanthus.

The caption appears to indicate that the frame was to be found in Tivoli, but there is no other evidence of its existence there. Instead, it is probably that of one of the windows of the Mausoleum of Annia Regilla near the Via Appia Antica (second century CE) which are virtually identical in design. One of them was recorded a little later on by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, and this drawing (one of a set covering the monument) again shows the window’s upper left-hand corner, and it is practically undistinguishable in almost every respect from the Coner drawing and may well depend on a common prototype. It seems likely, therefore, that the Coner drawing’s label is erroneous, perhaps relating not to this drawing but to the one immediately above it.

The script of the caption is identical with the handwriting on other sixteenth-century drawings in the album, which very much confirms that the drawing – like the others on the sheet – is by Bernardo della Volpaia.

RELATED IMAGES: [Antonio da Sangallo the Younger] Florence, GDSU, 1168 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 88; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, pp. 123–24)

Ashby 1904, p. 48
Census, ID 45646

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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