To an approximate scale of 1:10

apud. templum. mineru [a]e (‘Near the Temple of Minerva’); [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

This drawing is of a highly decorated cornice, with rows of dentils, bead-and-reel and egg-and-dart followed by a cyma reversa adorned with foliate decoration and then a corona with fluting on its gently undulating soffit and acanthus scrolls on its face. Ashby supposed that the location given in the caption referred to the Temple of Minerva in the Forum of Nerva, but this proves not to be correct. An early drawing by ‘Pseudo-Giocondo’ of the same cornice from around the same period gives the location as ‘in the road going to the Minerva’ (inela strada andando ala minerva), while later drawings by Raffaele da Montelupo and Oreste Vannocci Biringucci describe it as being in the ‘piazza of the Minerva’ (piaza della Minerva), which both imply that it was seen near to the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

The format followed is the usual one in the album for depicting cornices, which is a combination of a section with a raking view. It differs slightly from the similar depiction by ‘Pseudo-Giocondo’, which extends the section and minimises the raking view while omitting much of the surface decoration, suggesting that the format was being frequently followed but that the two drawings are independent of each other. That the cornice’s soffit was undulating, as recorded in the Coner drawing, rather that flat, as shown by ‘Pseudo-Giocondo’, is confirmed by the drawing by Raffaele da Montelupo, which, like the one made by Biringucci, shows the cornice to have been supported on some sort of pillar. The Coner drawing was copied, in simplified and shortened form, by Michelangelo.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 3Ar: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 118–19)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED; [‘Pseudo-Giocondo’] Florence, GDSU, 1542 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 15 [Raffaello da Montelupo, attr.] Lille, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille Sketchbook, fol. 61v/no. 848 (Lemerle 1997, p. 310); [Oreste Vannocci Biringucci] Siena, BCS, Ms S.IV.1, fol. 17v

Ashby 1904, p. 53
Census, ID 45605

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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