To an approximate scale of 1:10

• 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 richly adorned base is a variant of the standard Attic variety, and it was depicted around 1515 and like the others on this page and the one immediately before (for discussion see Fol. 77r/Ashby 131), is a variant of the standard Attic variety. It has an undecorated plinth with additional mouldings at the top and bottom, a lower torus with serpentine decoration and with two rope-like astragals above it, a scotia with two layers of leaf embellishment surmounted by an astragal with guilloche and a small ovolo with running wave, and then an upper torus covered with scales running upwards.

The base was linked by Ashby with one of the exedrae attached to the Forum of Augustus (see also Schreiter 2003, pp. 46–49). The connection is implied by a sheet by Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo depicting a base of identical design, which also features a plan of the exedra accompanied by an annotation stating that the base was then in a house (the chasa el prosidente) on the Quirinal Hill having previously ‘served’ (serviva) at San Basilio, a now-dismantled church that stood in the cella of the Temple of Mars Ultor (see Fol. 69v/Ashby 118). The Coner drawing, however, could instead be of a specimen of very similar design that was drawn – as Ashby also noted – by Baldassare Peruzzi and also depicted in a print in Oxford of 1537, which notes that it was in the house of Marquis Baldassini, the palace today known as Palazzo Baldassini, which was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in c.1513/14 (see Cat. Fol. 48v/Ashby 82). Probably the same base was later drawn by Andrea Palladio who stated that it was in ‘the house of a cardinal’ close to the church of Sant’Agostino, which is located near Palazzo Baldassini, as well as being illustrated (with certain minor inaccuracies) by Sebastiano Serlio in Book Four of his treatise of 1537. The Coner drawing presumably copies an earlier depiction like the others on this page, although in this case the black chalk underdrawing is very tentative. It was copied in turn 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: [Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1852 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 98; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, p. 209); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 634 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 57; Wurm 1984, pl. 466); [‘Master G.A. with the Caltrop’] Oxford, Ashmolean, Larger Talman Album, fol. 21r; Serlio 1619, 4, fol. 185r; [Andrea Palladio] Vicenza, Museo Civico, D 24r (Zorzi 1959, p. 104; Puppi 1989, p. 109)

Ashby 1904, pp. 65-66
Ashby 1913, p. 209
Census, ID 45875

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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