To an approximate scale of 1:60

[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

The drawing is an enlargement, with corresponding measurements, of the lower portion of the earlier representation of Trajan’s column (Fol. 42r/Ashby 69), albeit with several differences. It again shows the pedestal as lacking its doorway but, although omitting most of its sculpted embellishment, it indicates (just in black chalk) the position of one of the Victory figures holding up the inscription tablet; and it also departs from the earlier depiction by showing a half of the festoon adorning the top moulding together with one of the eagles at the corners of the column’s plinth (its partner sketched in more cursorily), and most of the wreath decoration ornamenting the torus base. It then indicates the borders of the bottom reliefs that wind around the shaft, although these, inexplicably, are shown as rising not from left to right, which is how the earlier Coner image correctly shows them, but from right to left, and showing the bottom lighting slit (oversized) too low down. An imaginary hole is made in the shaft at this level to reveal part of the spiral staircase inside, with more of it then seen just above where the shaft is cut right through, just below where the drawing is terminated. At this top level, the plan of the staircase, with its central core, is readily discernible, even though the steps are not compatible in their positions with those visible below. A very faint wavy line about one third the way up the pedestal perhaps indicates ground level.

The Coner image would appear to mark a considerable advance on previous representations of the lower part of the monument that survive such as the one by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini. This, like the Coner drawing, records both the front face of the pedestal and the lower part of the column, but the Coner drawing provides a far more comprehensible account of the monument as an actual structure, by recording various measurements (lacking in the Sangallo drawing), and by showing the column as a three-dimensional view rather than representing it in orthogonal projection, since this makes it possible to include the glimpses of the interior. Subsequently, the lower part of the monument was depicted in a strikingly similar way in a drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi, where the pedestal again has its doorway missing and is shown with just a selection of its applied sculpture, while the column above is treated in part as a three-dimensional view, enabling it to be cut through at the top to reveal a part of the internal staircase. The implication, therefore, is that the Peruzzi and Coner drawings are related, although it is probable that both depend ultimately on a now-lost prototype. A vertical section of the shaft showing the staircase inside, published by Antonio Labacco in 1552, was probably based on earlier studies from Peruzzi’s circle.

RELATED IMAGES: [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 484 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 60; Wurm 1984, pl. 478)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 18v (Hülsen 1910, p. 29; Borsi 1985, pp. 112–16); Labacco 1552, unpaginated (fol. 16)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 42r/Ashby 69; Fol. 53r/Ashby 91; Fol. 64r/Ashby 109; Fol. 76r/Ashby 129 (elsewhere on this page)

Ashby 1904, p. 64
Census, ID 45700

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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