To an approximate scale of 1:8

in. domo. aualli/ s (‘In the house of the Della Valle’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing is of a pedestal adorned with a large wheel-like roundel with a central disc, eight radial elements in the shape of bulbs and a surround ornamented with running wave. It is identified in the caption as being in the Della Valle house, which is located near today’s Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and was home to a collection of antiquities, assembled by Cardinal Andrea Della Valle (Bober–Rubinstein 1986, pp. 479–80; Christian 2010, pp. 383–88), that was one of the most important of the Renaissance. The same pedestal is also recorded in a mid-sixteenth-century drawing in Berlin when it was still in the Della Valle collection.

The drawing follows the preferred format in the Codex Coner of a section (here at the right) coupled with a raking view of the front, although this, like the subject, is at variance with the other drawings on the sheet. The Berlin drawing similarly combines a section with an elevation, but the elevation is depicted orthogonally and simply joined to the section. Why the Coner drawing was included on a page otherwise given over to cornices is unclear.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, inv. HdZ 3288, fol. 63v (Census, ID 45601)

Ashby 1904, p. 51
Census, ID 45601

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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