To an approximate scale of 1:10

[Measurements]

• 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

The drawing, again produced around 1515, shows half a base and it is combined, at the right, with one of different design, just like the amalgamated drawings on the previous page (Fol. 77r/Ashby 131). It displays a similarly antiquated approach to the base’s depiction by showing it in perspective from above but omitting the tops of the toruses as they run behind the shaft, with the result that the drawing appears to marry a view with a profile and gives rather the impression that the base is one of a half-column. This format, which differs those used for other depictions of bases in the codex, most probably depends on the rather old-fashioned conventions followed in drawings that were being copied. Although this base differs in detail from the one depicted next to it, they are both very elaborate with several of their constituent mouldings coinciding roughly in height. It has a bottom torus covered in an intricate geometric pattern resembling wickerwork, a scotia with foliate decoration, an astragal with tiny tongue-like decoration, another scotia with foliate decoration, and a final torus with laurel leaves, with the column shaft shown above being ornamented with a ring of acanthus leaves around its bottom.

The base can be identified as one from a pair of surviving Composite columns from the biapsidal portico of the Lateran Baptistery, perhaps originating from the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar where similar bases have been found (Schreiter 1995, p. 318). The drawing misrepresents its subject insofar as it shows the leaves rising up the lower part of the column shaft, whereas in reality they are part of the base on which the shaft stands. In this respect, it makes the same error seen in a drawing by Francesco di Giorgio. It is shown more accurately, however, in an early drawing by Giuliano da Sangallo in his Codex Barberini (fol. 25r: misleadingly identified as being in St Peter’s) and a drawing now in Holkham Hall, with the leaves forming part of the base, as it is too in a later Barberini drawing (fol. 38v). The base, later on, was illustrated by Andrea Palladio in his Quattro libri, who also used it as a model for the column bases on the back face of the façade of his San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice (1565). The drawing was subsequently copied by Francesco Borromini.

RELATED IMAGES: [Francesco Borromini] Vienna, Albertina, It. AZ (fol. 180; G XI, i): inv. Thelen 5 (Thelen 1967, 1, pp. 12–13)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Francesco di Giorgio] Turin, Bibl. Reale, Codex Saluzziano 148, addendum, fol. 100v Martini 1967, p. 289); [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fols 25r and 38v (Hülsen 1910, pp. 24 and 55; Borsi 1985, pp. 198–200); [Anon.] Holkham Hall, Ms 701, fol. 5r; Palladio 1570, 4, p. 63

Ashby 1904, p. 65
Ashby 1913, p. 209
Census, ID 45849

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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