To an approximate scale of 1:7

.Sup [ra]. portam. ecclesi [a]e. quatuor. sa [nc]to [rum]. coronatis (‘Above the doorway of the church of the four crowned saints’); [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 cornice was immured in the twelfth-century church of Santi Quattro Coronati at the time the drawing was made, as noted in the caption. It had been reused for the portal leading into the church’s forecourt as is made clear in a drawing from around the same date attributed to ‘Pseudo-Giocondo’, which describes it as the ‘portal of the road’ (porta della strada). It is of highly unusual design and has no close parallels in other drawings in the codex. The corona is carried on a cyma that has various other elements below it, and it then supports a succession of further mouldings that include a tall and slightly curving band of fluting beneath a run of egg-and-dart positioned oddly at the top. A drawing in the Uffizi of a slightly later date shows the cornice with an additional cyma above the egg-and-dart, which seems a more fitting termination, even though it is not featured in the several other drawings of the cornice from the sixteenth century.

All these other drawings are later than the one in the Codex Coner, and they include a neat freehand sketch by Baldassare Peruzzi dating to c.1519, although this seems likely to be a copy of an earlier rendition. They all show the cornice as a corner depicted orthogonally, rather than combining a section with a raking view, the format used for the Coner drawing and the norm for the album. The Coner drawing has dimensions given in braccia, this making it unlike the only other early drawing with measurements, the one by ‘Pseudo-Giocondo’, which has them in piedi. The drawing was copied in simplified form by Michelangelo.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 3Av: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 114–15)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [‘Pseudo-Giocondo’] Florence, GDSU, 1542 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 15); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 411 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 44; Wurm 1984, pl. 419); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 1961 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 111)

Ashby 1904, pp. 53–54
Census, ID 45613

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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