To an approximate scale of 1:10

prepe [sic]. arcem. militum (‘Close to the soldiers’ fortress [i.e. the Torre delle Milizie]’); [measurements]

• 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

The entablature is labelled as having been seen near the Torre delle Milizie which lies behind the Forum of Trajan from where it could well have come. It matches closely with fragments believed to have been part of the Basilica Ulpia (Bertoldi 1962, pp. 15–16), as well as with drawings of similar cornices seen near the now-demolished church of Santa Maria in Campo Carleo, popularly known as the Spoglia Cristi, at the forum’s southwestern edge (see entries for Fols 51v and 65v). These drawings include a large-scale elevational depiction by Giuliano da Sangallo, in his Codex Barberini, of an entablature fragment said in the annotation to have been recently discovered at the Spoglia Cristi, which is very similar to the one in the Coner drawing. It differs, however, in its measurements and in representing one of the fillets in the rounded form of a continuous bead moulding. An early sixteenth-century drawing by Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo shows the same entablature, but is closer to the Codex Barberini depiction, in showing the fillet as a rounded moulding and in summarising the Barberini annotation.

The drawing is grouped with those of other entablatures that are notably austere, as is the one originally on the facing page that was seen near the Milvian Bridge (Fol. 65v/Ashby 112 Drawing 1).

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 10r (Hülsen 1910, p. 18; Borsi 1985, pp. 86-87); [Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1326 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 102)

Ashby 1904, p. 55
Census, ID 47174

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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