Not known

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over black chalk and stylus lines

Bernardo della Volpaia

This drawing is one half of a fused-together image of two different highly embellished bases. This particular base, which is unidentified, has a plinth decorated with bucrania which have garlands suspended from their necks, a lower torus with a banded wreath-like adornment, a scotia with anthemion embellishment, two ornamented astragals, a fluted scotia and, at the top, a rather thin upper torus. The sequence of mouldings is similar to that of the bases on the ground storey of the Pantheon (see Fols 65r/Ashby 111, 80r/Ashby 134 and 82r/Ashby 136), although these are unornamented. The small portion of the fluted column shaft seen above the base is distinctive in that the flutes are all individually framed.

Combining depictions of two different bases viewed from the front is a form of representation that is unlike the one used earlier in the codex for decorated bases (Fols 73r–74r) or that seen further on for undecorated examples (Fols 80r–83v), and it was presumably suggested by drawings that were being copied. Also indicative of copying is the exaggerated splaying of the profile and the clumsy handling of the perspective, especially in representing the toruses from above but without showing their tops as they run behind the shaft, which is also a characteristic of the drawings on the next page (Fol. 78r/Ashby 132). This same characteristic is frequently seen in drawings of bases, seen likewise from the front, produced decades earlier, including those on an early sheet in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini and on two folios by Francesco di Giorgio. All this suggests that the drawing was produced during the compilation’s second phase of production.

The drawing is on a page that has been greatly reduced in size and was originally part of the same double folio as the following page (Fol. 78r/Ashby 132), which has drawings of bases represented in exactly the same way, and which has its chain lines running vertically as opposed to horizontally as is the norm in the codex. When this page was removed from the original compilation, glue was applied to its verso so that it could be laid down, as also the case with drawings of the Arch of Janus (Fol. 36r/Ashby 58) and Trajan’s Column (Fol. 76r/Ashby 129). The top half of the sheet, which would have carried the original page number, was probably discarded at this same time, suggesting that it was either blank or was damaged during the gluing process. The missing number was later added to the top left-hand corner of the present sheet as a record of its place in the sequence. The drawing was copied by Michelangelo but just as a profile, and later by Francesco Borromini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 1Ar: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 49; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 86–87); [Francesco Borromini] Vienna, Albertina, It. AZ (fol. 180; G XI, i): inv. Thelen 4 (Thelen 1967, 1, p. 12)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 15r (Hülsen 1910, pp. 24–26; Borsi 1985, pp. 104–08; [Francesco di Giorgio] Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Codex Saluzziano 148, addendum, fols 99r–v and 100r–v (Martini 1967, p. 289)

Ashby 1904, p. 65
Census, ID 45821

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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