To an approximate scale of 1:5

.a. tibure. (‘At Tivoli’)

• 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 richly ornamented base, according to the caption, was seen at Tivoli but remains unidentified. The design is very unusual, with a plinth decorated with shells, two cyma mouldings enriched with foliage, a scotia adorned with attenuated leaves, and a torus treated as a garland. The two cyma mouldings give it some additional height, and the composition has a parallel in the column bases from the Lateran Baptistery that are shown in a subsequent drawing in the codex (Fol. 78r/Ashby 132) and were later illustrated by Andrea Palladio.

The drawing is like the one at the bottom of this sheet (Drawing 4) in being executed in a much lighter ink than the two others, and in being less comfortably positioned on the page, which implies they were probably added subsequently. There are no other surviving images of the base, apart from a partial copy of this drawing made by Michelangelo and a copy produced later by Francesco Borromini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 1Ar: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 49; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 86–87); [Francesco Borromini] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, HdZ 3826, inv. Thelen 3 (Thelen 1967, 1, p. 12)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: Palladio 1570, 4, p. 63

Ashby 1904, p. 61
Census, ID 45627

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.

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk