Not known

In casa de Sig [no]ri. della Valle [‘in the house of the lords Della Valle’]; 19 [in graphite]

• 1625/35
  Date range: 1625/35

Pen and brown ink and brown wash over graphite

Seventeenth-Century Hand 2 (Sangallo Copyist 2)

This cornice is labelled as being in Rome’s Palazzo Della Valle, and the drawing, like the other on the sheet, is a seventeenth-century insertion. Its closest parallel is, again, a drawing in Berlin dating from the mid-sixteenth century which gives the same location, although it again depicts a rather shorter length (with seven full dentils rather than ten) as well as a bead-and-reel moulding at the bottom and a part of the frieze below. Other depictions of the cornice include two from the mid- century from a compilation in Saint Petersburg, and an early sixteenth-century sheet by Lorenzo Donati (in section-plus-view format) which also features the cornice, then likewise in the Della Valle collection, that is shown in the Coner drawing above.

The drawing’s perspectival format, which allows sight of the undersides of the corona and dentils, is typical of the early sixteenth century but it is poorly understood since it fails to show the corona turning the corner and receding into depth. Like the other seventeenth-century copy drawings in the codex, this one is numbered in graphite.

RELATED IMAGES: [Anon.] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, inv. OZ 114, fol. 6

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Lorenzo Donati] Florence, GDSU, 1842 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 107); [Anon.] Saint Petersburg, Codex Destailleur B, fols 28 and 84r (Lanzarini–Martinis 2015, pp. 104–05 and 140–41)

Ashby 1904, p. 53
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 632–33
Census, ID 45604

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.

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk