To an approximate scale of 1:10

Tabernacula. S./ mariae. rotondae. (‘Tabernacle of Santa Maria Rotunda’)

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks

Bernardo della Volpaia

What is depicted, as the caption indicates, belongs to one of the tabernacles inside the Pantheon, and, more specifically, to one of the four with triangular pediments (those flanking the building’s entrance bay and the apse directly opposite it). Strictly speaking, however, the depiction takes the form of two drawings, one of the horizontal entablature and another just above it, showing the lower part of the pediment’s angled and crowning cyma. The two drawings do not relate to each other coherently as the tabernacle’s entablature is shown in section with a raking view of its front while the cyma of the pediment is shown frontally.

The entablature is depicted accurately for the most part, showing both sides of the architrave together with its panelled soffit, although there is an oddity. It has been incorrectly given its own crowning cyma moulding. Such a cyma moulding is omitted from an entablature that supports a pediment, and cymas are only found on the pediment’s two sloping sides. The ‘incorrect’ inclusion of the cyma here was presumably intended to refer to a bottom corner of the pediment where the cyma of the pediment’s sloping side meets the horizontal entablature. This unusual inclusion of the cyma moulding at the top of the entablature is repeated in a drawing in the Codex Mellon, suggesting that, despite the absence there of the raking view, both drawings were derived in part from the same source. The additional drawing showing the cyma of the pediment frontally may have been added to indicate the angle of the slope, a feature that is not evident in the raking view.

The Coner drawing was copied by Michelangelo, who drew the cornice and the architrave separately, and also by Amico Aspertini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 3Av: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 114–15; [Amico Aspertini] London, BM, Aspertini Sketchbook II, fol. 40v (Bober 1957, p. 89)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Domenico Aimo (Il Varignana), attr.] New York, Morgan Library, Codex Mellon, fol. 32r

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 8r/Ashby 13; Fol. 23r/Ashby 35; Fol. 23v/Ashby 36; Fol. 24r/Ashby 37; Fol. 24v/Ashby 38; Fol. 38r/Ashby 61; Fol. 38v/Ashby 62; Fol. 39r/Ashby 63; Fol. 50v/Ashby 86; Fol. 65r/Ashby 111 (elsewhere on this page); Fol. 80r/Ashby 134; Fol. 82r/Ashby 136

Ashby 1904, p. 54
Census, ID 45789

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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