Not known

ponte. molle (‘Ponte Molle’)

• 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

Ashby could find no trace of this notably austere cornice, which the caption records as being located at the Milvian Bridge (Ponte Molle), and he suggested that it was a fragment, perhaps originating from a nearby tomb on the Via Flaminia, that had been incorporated into the bridge’s fabric. Of the five drawings on the sheet, this one is incongruous in being a cornice rather than an architrave, in being undecorated, and in being drawn with a perspective receding in a different direction. What is clear is that the drawing was not executed at the same time as the others on the sheet below it. It is likely to have been added after them since the one of an architrave on the far left was originally conceived as showing a full entablature before this idea was abandoned (see Drawing 2). It may have been added to this sheet, which was originally a verso, because of its resemblance to those of similarly austere cornices that were drawn, in the original Coner compilation, on the facing page which was a recto (Fol. 66r/Ashby 113).

The drawing was copied by Michelangelo and also, as a bare profile, by Francesco Borromini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 2Av: left side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 48; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 112–13); [Francesco Borromini] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, HdZ 3826, inv. Thelen 1 (Thelen 1967, 1, p. 11)

Ashby 1904, p. 54
Census, ID 45493

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