Not known

22 [in graphite]

• 1625/35
  Date range: 1625/35

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over traces of ?graphite

Seventeenth-Century Hand 2 (Sangallo Copyist 2)

This drawing and the one below, which are seventeenth-century additions to the codex and are both numbered in graphite, are of unusual Ionic capitals of almost identical design, with volutes in the form of cornucopias that have three theatrical masks positioned between them. They could depict either the front and rear faces of the same capital or, more probably, two different capitals from the same antique structure, as is suggested by small differences between them in detailing. The capital in this drawing has a taller abacus with a decorated rather than a plain upper moulding and has a neck with the acanthus leaves in a simple row rather than overlapping further leaves. According to the caption at the sheet’s bottom, which would apply to both drawings, the capitals were seen in the house of ‘Antonietto delle Medaglie’ a person otherwise known as Antonio Conteschi (Campbell 2004). Conteschi was a prominent collector and dealer active in Rome during the mid- sixteenth century (Nesselrath 1992, p. 160), whose house was situated just north of Trajan’s Markets (Ashby 1904).

The same capitals are recorded in almost exactly the same way on a closely related sheet from the mid- sixteenth century now in Berlin (albeit with minor variations in the depiction the acanthus leaves: see Campbell 2004), and this carries an almost identical annotation giving their whereabouts as the house of Antonio Conteschi, as well as also providing a side view of a volute. Another mid-sixteenth-century drawing now in Saint Petersburg shows a half of one of the faces together with half a side view but gives the location this time as ‘behind the Temple of Peace’ – meaning behind the Basilica of Maxentius – which could perhaps be the original findspot. The Coner and Berlin depictions were probably based on a sixteenth-century drawing that is now lost.

RELATED IMAGES: [Anon.] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, inv. OZ 114, fol. 10 (Römische Skizzen 1988, pp. 152–56)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Saint Petersburg, Hermitage, Codex Destailleur B, fol. 76r (Lanzarini–Martinis 2014, pp. 152–53)

Ashby 1904, pp. 69-70
Ashby 1913, pp. 209–10
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 638–39
Census, ID 46904

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