Not known

• c.1515
  Datable to c.1515

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over traces of black chalk and a single vertical stylus line at centre

Bernardo della Volpaia

This unusual Composite capital has a striated bell decorated with acanthus and palmettes. It is also depicted in two drawings in the anonymous Codex Strozzi, one (GDSU, 1604 Ar) more cursory with plain leaves and showing more egg-and-dart between the volutes, and the other (GDSU, 1597 Ar) with far more attention to detail, such as with regard to the ornamentation on the volutes and the precise shape of the palmette, which both differ slightly from their depictions here, although all these drawings may well have a shared ancestry. The capital was recorded later on in a drawing by a follower of Maarten van Heemskerck, this confirming the veracity of the second Codex Strozzi depiction. The Coner drawing is roughly the same size as the one above it and the two are very neatly aligned, which, along with their very similar formats and their cursory treatments of the capitals’ right-hand sides, could suggest that they were both copied from the same source. It was presumably included on the same sheet as the capitals on the right because of its palmette decoration. The horizontal section through the shaft is hatched, like in many drawings of capitals dating from this slightly later period.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, Codex Strozzi, 1597 Ar and 1604 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 27 and 29); [Circle of Maarten van Heemskerck]: Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. 79 D 2a (Heemskerck Album II), fol. 58v (Hülsen–Egger 1913–16, 2, p. 36)

Ashby 1904, p. 69
Census, ID 47021

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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