To an approximate scale of 1:7

[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 cornice, which is not recorded in any other early drawing, is of a broadly standard composition for the Corinthian order, although it has several extremely unusual features. The dentils, which are accompanied by a pinecone at the corner, are highly unorthodox in having faces that are hollowed out and undersides decorated with rosettes, and they are then separated from the customary band of egg-and-dart above by a cavetto moulding. This is followed by a corona which has its soffit decorated unusually with a relief, the portion depicted here showing a candelabrum and a gryphon linked to a foliate scroll (rather like the frieze decoration of Rome’s Temple of Antoninus and Faustina: see Fol. 59r/Ashby 100 Drawing 3). The corona’s front face is embellished with a row of shells (like the corona of Donatello’s Cavalcanti Annunciation and Michelozzo’s Santissima Annunziata tabernacle), and the cyma at the top is then ornamented with acanthus.

Although of the same general format as most other Coner depictions of entablatures from this early time, the drawing is unusual for its recording of the relief decoration, which is usually omitted, and is not entirely compatible here with the angle of the soffit shown in the section. It was copied by Francesco Borromini, although he gave it a caption relating to the drawing below it.

RELATED IMAGES: [Francesco Borromini] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, HdZ 3826, inv. Thelen 2 (Thelen 1967, 1, pp. 11–12)

Ashby 1904, p. 53
Census, ID 45498

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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