To an approximate scale of 1:13

Antonij (‘Of Antonio’); [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 annotation ascribes the design of this architectural element to Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, the only modern architect to be named in the codex. It is one of four such attributions to Sangallo, the others appearing on Fols 48v and 68r [x 2]. The project for which this element was intended is not named, but a likely identification can be inferred. By adding all the vertical dimensions given in the drawing for the individual mouldings, it is evident that this cornice-like design was 110½ minutes tall, equivalent to just over a metre, which is an enormous size for such a moulding and far larger than the cornices for example of the Cortile del Belvedere (cf. Fol. 54r/Ashby 93). This would suggest it was intended for a vast structure, and the obvious candidate would be St Peter’s. In fact, the design corresponds well with the continuous impost running beneath the half domes of the minor apses built in the transept arms which, although later demolished, are depicted in a 1530s drawing by Maarten van Heemskerck of the south transept. The Coner drawing, like the half-dome impost, has an uninterrupted corona with the mouldings below projecting and receding in correspondence with the pilaster supports, a form of articulation that Bramante used for the cornices of the entablatures of the Cortile del Belvedere (see Fols. 53v/Ashby 92 and 54r/Ashby 93).

The sequence of subsidiary mouldings from the neck and apophyge to the cyma recta at the top is very similar to that of the impost Bramante designed for the Cortile del Belvedere that is recorded on the next page (Fol. 68r/Ashby 116). The presumed impost also resembles those that Antonio da Sangallo designed for Palazzo Baldassini and Palazzo Farnese at about the time the codex was being compiled. The drawing was copied by Michelangelo, but in profile only.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 1Av: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 49; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 90–91)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Maarten van Heemskerck], Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. 79 D 2 (Heemskerck Album I), fol. 8r (Hülsen–Egger 1913–16, 1, p. 6)

Ashby 1904, p. 56

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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