To an approximate scale of 1:15

In S. Marco (‘In San Marco’); Faccia/ Toro sup[eriore]/ Listello/ Cavetto/ faccia/ treccia/ scotia/ listello [in graphite] (‘fillet, upper torus, fillet, scotia, fillet, plait, scotia, fillet’); 21 [in graphite]

• 1625/35
  Date range: 1625/35

Pen and ink and dark brown wash in two tones

Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist)

This right-hand depiction, added like its partner to the codex in the seventeenth century, duplicates a base in the codex drawn previously (Fol. 73r/Ashby 124). It shows one of the often-drawn column bases from the interior of the Temple of Mars Ultor, specifically one that had been removed to the church of San Marco (the location indicated in the caption), although exactly when the record was originally produced remains unclear. It is far less accurate than the earlier drawing in the codex, depicting just one rather than two astragals between the scotias and giving it a vertical rather than rounded profile, omitting the further astragal just above the lower torus, and making the gadrooning of the lower torus rather more like egg-and-dart. This suggests that, like the base shown to the left, the depiction was copied from a now-lost earlier drawing that was similarly imprecise, related to a mid- sixteenth-century copy of it now in Berlin. The listing of the mouldings (in graphite), which is not a feature of any other Coner drawing (apart from the neighbouring one that has the single word zoccolo written next to it), may have been similarly prompted by the original on which this drawing was based (Campbell 2004). The plinth was originally drawn mistakenly with egg-and-dart ornamentation, like the torus above it, but the ink was then carefully erased. The number ‘21’ written in graphite refers to the seventeenth-century campaign to add new drawings to the codex.

RELATED DRAWINGS: [Anon.] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, inv. OZ 114, fol. 5

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 73r/Ashby 124

Ashby 1904, pp. 64–65
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 636–37
Census, ID 45518

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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