To an approximate scale of 1:8

[Measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines, traces of black chalk and compass pricks

Bernardo della Volpaia

This highly ornamented Doric capital has a fluted neck in part adorned with leaves springing from the astragal at its base, followed by an echinus adorned with egg-and-dart above a ring of bead and reel, and an abacus with florets (one shown) at the corners of its soffit. The same capital was later illustrated in Book Four of Sebastiano Serlio’s treatise (1537), where it is described it as a mixture of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian elements, as well as in a sixteenth-century print labelled a ‘Doric composite’ (composito di Dorico).

The drawing has no caption indicating its location. Ashby thought that a drawing by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini, labelled as being ‘in Trastevere’, was of the same capital, but despite its undoubted similarity, it differs in having a double neck rather than a single neck of extended height. The Serlio illustration that corresponds almost exactly with the Coner drawing has a gloss describing this capital as likewise being ‘in Trastevere in Rome’ (Serlio 1619, fol. 184r), which perhaps suggests that the Codex Barberini drawing was of the same capital but was not depicted correctly. That the Coner drawing is of a capital in Trastevere is not at all certain, however, since a later drawing of a similar capital in Saint Petersburg locates it in the church of San Marcello.

The drawing was copied by Michelangelo but converted into a simple frontal depiction.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] London, BM, 1859-6-25-560/1v (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, pp. 47–48; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 94–95)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 14v (Hülsen 1910, p. 14v; Borsi 1985, p. 103); Serlio 1619, 4, fol. 184v; [Master G.A. with the Caltrop] Ferrara, Bibl. Com. Ariostea, Ms I. 217, fol. 25r; [Anon.] Saint Petersburg, Hermitage, Codex Destailleur B, fol. 100v (Lanzarini–Martinis 2014, p. 152)

Ashby 1904, p. 59
Census, ID 45835

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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