Not known

• c.1515
  Datable to c.1515

Pen and brown ink over black chalk

Bernardo della Volpaia

This view is of the left half of a Composite capital with two tiers of acanthus that is very similar to those on the Arch of Titus, but there are some minor but significant differences. For example, the acanthus foliage on the calathus is much more vegetal in character, that ornamenting the volute is of different design and composition, and the egg-and-dart decoration on the echinus includes more elements. In these same respects, the drawing also differs from another half view of a Composite capital shown on a subsequent page (Fol. 86r/Ashby 144 Drawing 3). The drawing’s meticulous character would suggest it was closely copied from another drawing of the same format.

Although more fastidious than some of the other drawings on the sheet, the drawing differs from many other depictions of capitals in the codex, which suggests that it was, like the others on this sheet, produced at a slightly later time. It includes the upper part of the shaft, and the horizontal section through it is hatched, like in other later drawings of capitals, rather than handled with wash.

Composite capitals became increasingly favoured in early sixteenth-century architecture and would come to be employed particularly in works by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, such as his Cappella Serra in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli of 1518 (see Pagliara 1992, pp. 147–49).

Ashby 1904, p. 68
Census, ID 46930

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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