To an approximate scale of 1:14

.T [ertia corona]. anphiteatri. uespasiani (‘Third [cornice] of the amphitheatre of Vespasian’); [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

Although identified by the caption, the drawing differs from the cornice actually on the Colosseum’s third storey as this does not have dentils and has a plain rectilinear band instead, a mistake resulting either from faulty recollection or from copying an earlier drawing that was itself incorrect. The cornice was correctly recorded, although without measurements, by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini in a comparable section-plus-view format (unusual in that compilation), and as a perspectival view on a sheet, attributed to Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, where this and other cornices from the Colosseum are bizarrely treated as corners.

Other details from the Colosseum appear below (Drawing 4) and on the drawing’s verso (Fol. 66v/Ashby 114 Drawing 2].

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 65v (Hülsen 1910, p. 69); [Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, attr.] Florence, GDSU, 2043 Av (Bartoli 1914-22, 6, pp. 30–31)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 2r/Ashby 2; Fol. 2v/Ashby 3; Fol. 3r/Ashby 4; Fol. 3v/Ashby 5; Fol. 25 and flap recto/Ashby 39; Fol. 25 verso of flap/Ashby 39a; Fol. 25v/Ashby 40; Fol. 26r/Ashby 41; Fol. 66r/Ashby 113 (Drawing 4 on this page); Fol. 66v/Ashby 114; Fol. 83v/Ashby 137

Ashby 1904, p. 55
Günther 1988, p. 337
Census, ID 48195

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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