Not known

A Tiuoli (‘At Tivoli’); 11 [in graphite]

• 1625/35
  Date range: 1625/35

Pen and brown ink and brown wash

Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist)

Another seventeenth-century addition to the codex, this drawing very possibly represents a frieze now in the Vatican Collection (Amelung 1903–08, 1, p. 653, and pl. 69) that incorporates a leaping dog or lion in scrolling acanthus foliage. The caption states that it was seen at Tivoli, which is plausible since a print based on a drawing by Giovanni Battista Montano, which shows a very similar frieze, was published by Calisto Ferrante (1638, fol. 4) with an annotation describing its location as being, again, in Tivoli. This location is further confirmed by a later Montano print published by Giovan Giacomo De Rossi (1684, 3, fol. 12), which has an annotation stating that ‘this temple was discovered in Tivoli, most rich in ornamentation of which is shown the cornice and the embellishment of the exterior frieze’ (Questo Tempio fù trovato à Tivoli, richissimo di ornamenti de quali ve se ne mostra la cornice, e l’ornamento del fregio della parte di fuori).

As Ashby noted, a similar frieze with dogs is drawn in the Codex Escurialensis but with a pair of acanthus scrolls of rather different composition, the corresponding scroll being flanked on the left by a mask with a bowl on its head and on the right by a vase. A similar frieze is also recorded in a mid-sixteenth-century drawing in the so-called ‘Mantegna’ sketchbook in Berlin and another related to it in Saint Petersburg, which are both accompanied by the same motifs, with the Saint Petersburg drawing giving Tivoli as the location, and using the same Latin name, Tibur). The drawing by Montano, which is related to these, misreads the dog as a panther and reverses the composition, presumably in preparation for a future engraving. It is likely that the Coner depiction, despite omitting the mask and vase, was based on a now lost drawing from the same family. Like others from the seventeenth century in the codex, it is numbered in graphite.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, 28-II-12 (Codex Escurialensis), fol. 36v (Egger 1906, pp. 105–06); [Anon.] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, Inv. OZ 111 (‘Mantegna Sketchbook’), fol. 17v (Leoncini 1993, pp. 96 and 154); [Anon.] Saint Petersburg, Hermitage, Codex Destailleur B, fol. 72v (Lanzarini–Martinis 2015, pp. 131–32); [Giovanni Battista Montano]; London, SJSM, vol. 124, fol. 66r (Fairbairn 1998, 2, pp. 668–69)

Ashby 1904, p. 49
Ashby 1913, p. 207
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 623–24
Census, ID 45570

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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