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Reference number

SM volume 115/126b

Purpose

Drawing 2 (bottom): Column base from the Temple of Concord

Aspect

Half section with perspectival elevation from above, with measurements

Scale

To an approximate scale of 1:5

Inscribed

Indomo./ canpolinis. (‘In the house of the Ciampolini’); [measurements]

Signed and dated

  • c.1513/14
    Datable to c.1513/14

Medium and dimensions

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

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Notes

Although similar in profile to the upper-level bases inside the Pantheon (cf. Desgodetz 1682, p. 52), this base is far more elaborate in decoration. It was seen, as the caption indicates, in the house of the Ciampolini, a residence located near to the Portico of Octavia (Bober–Rubinstein 1986, p. 473). As Ashby surmised (1904), it comes from the Temple of the Concord in the Roman Forum (Schreiter 1995, p. 332; Gaspari 1979, pp. 95–102), and it is one of at least five bases from this building that were known in the Renaissance (Ashby 1913; Census). This one, however, is the earliest-drawn example, and it was previously depicted in the Codex Escurialensis when it was already in the Ciampolini house.

The Escurialensis drawing, and another in the Uffizi from a slightly later time (Nesselrath 1996, p. 185, fig. 31), differ from the Coner depiction in showing the base from an oblique viewpoint. The Coner drawing, by contrast, combines a frontal view with a section made visible by way of a cut-away quadrant, and shows the base from above so that a fictitious peg hole is visible. This format is the one generally used in the codex for highly embellished bases, and like many other depictions of bases, it is meticulously annotated with measurements. There is evidence at the left of some adjustment in the perspective of the underdrawing before the drawing was inked in. It was copied in modified form as just a part elevation by Michelangelo.

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

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, 28-II-12 (Codex Escurialensis), fol. 51r [Egger 1905–06, p. 129; [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 4337 Ar (see Nesselrath 1996, p. 185 and fig. 31)

Literature

Ashby 1904, pp. 63–64
Ashby 1913, p. 209
Günther 1988, p. 338
Census, ID 46582

Level

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

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.


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