To an approximate scale of 1:10

incarcarara (‘In the calcarara’); [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 was presumably included on this sheet because the entablature – with its channel-decorated corona and lack of supporting modillions – is so similar to the one depicted above it, and because their formats are the same. As Ashby noted, the ‘Calcarara’ was the locality at one end of the vanished Circus Flaminius (near today’s Piazza dei Calcarari just east of the Largo di Torre Argentina) where marble was converted into lime; and, as he also noted, an identical entablature is recorded in later drawings, including two by Baldassare Peruzzi, which give the location as the ‘Arco di Camilliano’, a ruin then standing near the ancient Iseum (close to today’s Collegio Romano) some 300m to the north. Ashby suggested that there were fragments of the same cornice in the two different places – which could be correct if a portion of a cornice from near the Arco di Camigliano had been transported to the Calcarara for the purpose of lime production. Intriguingly, an engraving of this cornice is found in an album in Ferrara on the page immediately before one of the cornices depicted above it here, although this may just be a coincidence.

The cornice is grouped on the same page with two others of similar type, all three without modillions and two of the three with fluted coronas, while similar cornices are also depicted on the following folios (62v and 63r). All are shown as corners – a drawing convention used in the codex – but there is no evidence to suggest that they represent actual corners.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 386 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 42; Wurm 1984, pl. 13); Florence, GDSU, 539 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 51; Wurm 1984, pl. 104); [Jacques Prevost] Ferrara, Bibl. Com Ariostea, MS. I 217, fol. 44r

Ashby 1904, p. 52
Lembke 1994, p. 153
Census, ID 47202

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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