To an approximate scale of 1:5

in. S. anastasia. (‘In Sant’Anastasia’); [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

This elaborate base has a plinth followed by twin astragals with plait-like decoration, a fluted scotia, and a cyma with foliate decoration. According to the annotation, it was to be seen in Sant’Anastasia, a church situated at the foot of the Palatine just behind Santa Maria in Cosmedin. The church was of Early Christian origin (Armellini 1942, pp. 651–53), probably built originally using spolia, and with this base being reused. It can no longer be seen there, perhaps owing to the church’s extensive refurbishment, under Pope Urban VIII, by the seventeenth-century architect Luigi Arrigucci (Barry 1999). Other than a modified copy by Michelangelo showing the base from the front and a further copy by Francesco Borromini, the only other known record of this base is a drawing by Pirro Ligorio, where it is described as still being in Sant’Anastasia. A very similar base ‘in Trastevere’ was drawn by Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo, but this, as Ashby suspected, was a different example. Another similar base can be seen in the Capitoline Museum (Streicher 1995, p. 201)

The drawing, in the form of an orthogonal projection with a profile on the right and a rather squashed version of it on the left, has no parallel elsewhere in the codex, and this was perhaps determined by the drawing on which it was based. It is executed in ink of a similar tone to that in Drawing 1, which is much lighter than in the two other drawings, suggesting that they were both added to the sheet as afterthoughts. This drawing may have been inserted because the base has twin astragals adorned with plaited decoration like the two depicted above it.

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 3829, inv. Thelen 3 (Thelen 1967, 1, p. 12)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1804 Ar and 2103 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 102; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, pp. 206–17 and 224); [Pirro Ligorio] Turin, AST, Antichità, XV, fol. 213v

Ashby 1904, p. 63
Census, ID 45649

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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