To an approximate scale 1:8

canales. sunt/ 24 (‘There are 24 flutes’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

Of a commonplace Attic type, albeit with a double plinth, this base remains unidentified and is not recorded in any other known drawing. It is on the first of five pages of bases that are all depicted in a similar way, each in the form of a partial section rendered orthogonally and showing little more than the profile, but with salient mouldings visible behind the profile seen in perspective from above, this being the preferred method in the codex for representing bases that have no surface decoration. The drawing is also the first on two pages of bases that all have fluted shafts represented identically as coming forward from the section below, a normal practice in the codex for depicting shafts of this kind. As the annotation states, this shaft has twenty-four flutes and it is thus in line with the rule stipulated by Vitruvius (Book 4, chapter 3, 9) for Ionic and other columns.

The placement of this drawing and the two next to it at the bottom of the page, leaving the rest of it blank, suggests further depictions of bases with fluted shafts were intended to be added.

Ashby 1904, p. 66
Günther 1988, p. 338
De Angeli 1992, p. 43
Census, ID 45890

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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