To an approximate scale of 1:13

.a. S. c[a]ecilia [‘In Santa Cecilia’); [measurements]

• c.1515
  Datable to c.1515

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

The enormous marble vase illustrated here is a volute krater with elaborately spiralling handles, and it still stands in the forecourt of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, the church mentioned in the caption. Rising from a pedestal of concave profile, it consists of a bowl with gadrooning at the bottom, an upper body that flares outwards towards the top, and two almost completely detached handles rising elegantly from the bowl but curving over the vase’s top rim where they form tightly spiralling scrolls. The drawing shows that the ends of the scrolls (now lost) once descended into the vase’s interior. It is generally accurate except that the vase is represented as being a little broader than it is in reality, and the number of supporting blocks around the rim are shown as four on each side instead of three. Other drawings of the vase include one by Giuliano da Sangallo in the Codex Barberini, which represents it as too narrow, and others by Marten van Heemskerck and Francisco de Holanda that are proportionally more accurate.

The drawing is consistent in style with others from the later phase of the codex’s execution, while the script of the caption is like other annotations by Bernardo della Volpaia. Depicting the vase from below increases its monumentality, an approach also adopted for the vase in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore shown on a following page (Fol. 85v/Ashby 143). The vase itself was restored in 1929 according to an inscription on the pedestal upon which it now stands.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 71v (Hülsen 1910, p. 75; Borsi 1985, pp. 144–46); [Maarten van Heemskerck], Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. 79 D 2 (Heemskerck Album I), fol. 36r (Hülsen and Egger 1913–16, 1, p. 21); [Francisco de Holanda] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, Antigualhas, fol. 30v (Da Felicidade Alves 1989, fol. 30v)

Ashby 1904, p. 69
Census, ID 46893

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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