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  • image SM volume 115/134a

Reference number

SM volume 115/134a

Purpose

Drawing 1 (top left): Column base from the Temple of Castor and Pollux

Aspect

Partial section with perspectival view, and measurements

Scale

To an approximate scale of 1:8

Inscribed

Tria[rum] colu[m]na[rum]/ sub. palatio. Maiore (‘Of the three columns below the great palace’); [measurements]

Signed and dated

  • c.1513/14
    Datable to c.1513/14

Medium and dimensions

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

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Notes

This drawing and the others arranged very neatly on the page follow the same format conventions used for those on the previous page (Fol. 79r), and they all depict bases broadly of the type found on the ground storey of the Pantheon (i.e. with two toruses and two scotias separated by twin astragals: see Fols 79r–80r/Ashby 133–34, passim). This particular example, as the caption indicates, comes from the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum, and it has an additional astragal above the upper torus. It was previously recorded no less than three times by Giuliano da Sangallo in the Codex Barberini, and one of these drawings (fol. 38v) is very like the Coner representation in depicting a portion of the base in an almost identical section-plus-view format, the only significant difference being that it shows the bottom of the fluted shaft in section and not as a partial view. The many subsequent depictions of the base include elevational studies by Antonio da Sangallo, Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo and Baldassare Peruzzi, and these, like the Coner and Barberini drawings, are all accompanied by numerous dimensions given in braccia and minutes. Their minor disagreements over the measurements suggest, however, that they depend ultimately upon independent surveys.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fols 38v, 63r and 71r (Hülsen 1910, pp. 55, 66 and 74; Borsi 1985, p. 200); [Antonio da Sangallo the Younger] Florence, GDSU, 2047 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 31; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, p. 214); [Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1650 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 103; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, p. 196); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 632 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 58; Wurm 1984, pl. 463)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 41r/Ashby 67; Fol. 50r/Ashby 85

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 66
Günther 1988, p. 338
Census, ID 46795

Level

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

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.


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