To an approximate scale of 1:24

[Drawing] 97 [early seventeenth-century hand]; Nel giard. del GD.a (‘In the garden of the Grand Duke’) [Mount] 128 [x2]

• 1625/35
  Date range: 1625/35

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk or graphite; on laid paper (232x163mm), rounded corners at right, inlaid (window on verso of mount) [Verso] Blank [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart [Verso of mount] Window (223x156mm)

Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist)

[Drawing] Anchor in circle topped with six-pointed star (variant 4; cut at left) [Mount] Fleur-de-lys in circle topped with crown (variant 2; cut at bottom of window)

This drawing, one of the seventeenth-century additions to the album, shows an altar that originates from Rhodes or nearby (Von Hesberg 1981, pp. 229–30), which is today in the Cortile di Fama of Palazzo Pitti in Florence. When the drawing of it was produced, it was located, as the annotation states ‘in the garden’ of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but this was not the garden of Palazzo Pitti and was probably that of Palazzo Firenze in Rome, which had been acquired by Grand Duke Cosimo in 1561 (Nesselrath 1992, p. 160). Presumably, therefore, the drawing copies a now-lost original produced when the altar was in still Rome. Unlike most of the seventeenth-century drawings in the codex, it is not accompanied by a graphite number, which may suggest it was executed at a slightly different time, although it still formed part of a campaign to add drawings to the blank pages of the original compilation before it was transformed into an album. The drawing’s rather different subject, however, is less easy to explain, as altars do not feature at all prominently in the codex. Its position at the top of the page would suggest that the draughtsman was leaving room for a further drawing beneath it.

It is the only seventeenth-century drawing in the Codex Coner to have been copied by Francesco Borromini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Francesco Borromini] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, HdZ 3829, inv. Thelen 3 (Thelen 1967, 1, p. 12)

Ashby 1904, p. 64
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 634–35
Census, ID 45698

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