To an approximate scale of 1:14

Justa. illos./ .S. crucis. (‘Near those of Santa Croce’); [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 complex base has a plinth decorated with foliate scrolls emerging from a lion’s head, a lower torus fashioned like a rope, which is followed by a cyma, a scotia with a fringe of round-bottomed flaps above it, an upper torus adorned with guilloche and finally an astragal. It is identified in the caption as being ‘next to those of Santa Croce’, which is ambiguous in meaning. The problem lies with the unclear word ‘those’ (illos), and the phrase could refer to the houses of the Santa Croce family as Ashby suggested, or to the houses belonging to the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, with both seeming possible. Members of the Santacroce family, especially Cardinal Prospero Santacroce, were certainly collectors of antiquities (Bober–Rubinstein 1986, p. 479), while the church of Santa Croce originally had a nave of spolia columns which could have been supported by bases of such a kind. That it was the church rather than the family palace is suggested by the drawing of a base in the Mellon Codex, which is identified as being at Santa Croce, presumably meaning the church, and has an almost identical sequence of mouldings although their surface decoration is not shown. No other drawings of this base are known apart from a modified copy, as a part elevation, by Michelangelo. A similar base from the church of Santa Croce is drawn on Fol. 78r/Ashby 132.

The base is represented in perspective on the left, to record its surface decoration, and with a quadrant removed on the right to show the profile, as is usual in the codex for depicting highly embellished bases. Like other such drawings of bases, a correction has been made on the left to the angle of the plinth’s receding edge so that it relates to the lower torus more credibly.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB 1Ar: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 49; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 86–87)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Domenico Aimo (Il Varignana), attr.] New York, Morgan Library, Codex Mellon, fol. 26v

Ashby 1904, p. 63
Census, ID 45653

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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