To an approximate scale of 1:7

[Drawing] non lunge a S. Baxilio manet [hidden by mount] (‘It survives not far from San Basilio’); [measurements] [Mount] 118 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over black chalk, stylus lines and compass pricks; on laid paper (233x164mm), rounded corners at left, inlaid [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (223x158mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

See recto

The head belonged to one of the caryatids once adorning the upper level of the Forum of Augustus, construction of which was begun at the end of the first century BCE (see e.g. Viscogliosi 2000, pp. 53–62; Meneghini 2009, pp. 59–78). Although now lost, it was once to be seen, as the annotation indicates, near the church of San Basilio, which stood within the forum’s confines on its south-eastern side, being located, according to a later drawing by Giovannantonio Dosio in Berlin, opposite the church and ‘up on a corner of a house’ (in sur un canto di casa). Several other fragments of caryatids have since been discovered (now mainly in Rome’s Museo dei Fori Imperiali), permitting a reliable reconstruction of the upper-level composition (in the Casa dei Cavalieri di Rodi), which has the draped figures of the caryatids supporting a continuous cornice and alternating with shields ornamented with bearded heads (Bauer 1985; Bauer 1988; Viscogliosi 2000, p. 55).

The Coner drawing has much in common with one of the same subject included previously in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini. There are, admittedly, certain differences of detail, such as in the representation of the plaits behind the head, the omission in the Coner drawing of a band of apparent wickerwork above the centrally-parted hair, and the greatly increased size of the egg-and-dart decoration of the echinus above; but in both drawings the head is shown from a similar vantage point, the echinus is followed by just an abacus, while the head itself, with the neck and shoulders below it, is supported on some kind of plinth that was not a part of the original sculpture. Both drawings, moreover, have profile views of the head positioned directly beneath them, the profile in the Coner drawing being repeated twice mainly in just black chalk, linking the drawings also to a depiction of the head by ‘Pseudo-Giocondo’ and the one by Dosio in Berlin that are profiles alone. The Coner profile, however, evidently went awry in its execution: the head itself, faintly sketched in black chalk, is both mispositioned and much too large in scale for it even to fit on the page. It could be, therefore, that the Coner representation was based on some lost prototype similar to the Barberini drawing, but something went wrong in the copying process which led to the profile being abandoned.

The head was included in the codex partly not just because of its possible architectural usage. It was also being regarded here as the equivalent of a capital, since it directly precedes the many drawings of capitals seen on subsequent pages. Caryatid figures, moreover, were especially topical at this particular moment. A woodcut plate of caryatid figures was included in Fra’ Giocondo’s edition of Vitruvius, published in 1511, and caryatid figures were employed by Raphael to articulate the monochrome bottom level of his Stanza di Eliodoro in the Vatican Palace (1511–14), which were seemingly inspired by the same original fragment. The Raphael caryatids mostly feature heads with plaited hair and in every case the head carries an echinus ornamented with egg-and-dart beneath an abacus. In fact, in one instance, above a portal in one of the room’s corners, the head is supported with its neck and shoulders on the doorframe, very much like the head fragment of the original sculpture depicted here. Some short time afterwards, a representation of the head fragment was included in a print produced by Raphael’s collaborator Marcantonio Raimondi, which may have been intended as the frontispiece for an architectural publication (Christian 2016). It shows the façade of a structure with atlantes (the male equivalents of caryatids) below and then caryatids above but with the head fragment (for reasons that are far from clear) also included and shown at colossal scale at the centre – although this time with drapes correctly hanging from the shoulders, and no supporting plinth.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 10v (Hülsen 1910, p. 20; Borsi 1985, pp. 87–88); Fra’ Giocondo 1511, fol. 2r; [‘Pseudo-Giocondo’] Florence, GDSU, 2059 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 17); [Marcantonio Raimondi] Oberhuber 1978, p. 221; [Giovannantonio Dosio] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, OZ 109 (Codex Destailleur A), fol. 1v

Ashby 1904, pp. 58–59
Ashby 1913, pp. 207–08
Census, ID 45764

Group

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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