To an approximate scale of 1:17

[measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing is unlabelled but, as Ashby realised, it shows the partly surviving entablature belonging to the Forum of Nerva. The forum – built under the Emperor Domitian from c.85 CE – is the one that was laid out in front of the Temple of Minerva (finally demolished in 1606; see Fol. 52v/Ashby 90), and what remained, and still remains, of the enclosure was just a fragment of the long south-eastern (right-hand) side known as the Colonnacce, comprising a pair of engaged columns carrying an entablature and then an attic up above. These remnants are the subjects of very many drawings dating from the later fifteenth century onwards, some of which feature the entablature in isolation, among these a very early example in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini, and, from nearer the time of the Codex Coner, an orthogonal sketch included in the Codex Strozzi. It was just after this time that the complex became the subject of even-increasing archaeological scrutiny (see Viscogliosi 2000, pp. 63–86).

In the Codex Coner, the entablature is represented in the same way as many others depicted there, with a section on the far right and a partial raking view extending to the left, almost exactly the same format as was adopted in a later drawing by Palladio, which could well share a common ancestry with the Coner depiction. The mode of representation also corresponds with several others in the Codex recording details of Corinthian orders in that it does not include the capital, and like several others too it also omits a considerable amount of the decorative detailing, such as the ornamentation on the cyma mouldings at the tops of the architrave and cornice, and the figurative embellishments to the frieze.

The absence of any identifying caption is surprising given that the entablature had had such an influence on recent architecture from the mid- fifteenth century onwards. Together with that of the Spoglia Cristi (Fol. 88r/Ashby 147 Drawing 2), which is recalls except in very minor details of decoration, it had, from Palazzo Medici in Florence (begun 1444) onwards, provided a prime model for very many cornices that are similarly designed with bands of dentils and egg-and-dart beneath prominent modillions. The architrave depicted in the Coner drawing was copied by Michelangelo, with the profile of a similar architrave (presumably that seen in Drawing 2) featured next to it.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo], London, BM, 1859-6-25-560/2r and Florence, CB, 3Ar: left side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, pp. 45 and 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 98–99 and 116–17); [Andrea Palladio] Vicenza, Museo Civico, D 7r (Zorzi 1958, pp. 74–75; Puppi 1989, p. 101)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 9v (Hülsen 1910, p. 17; Borsi 1985, pp. 83–84); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, Codex Strozzi, 1587 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 26)

Ashby 1904, p. 46
Census, ID 45175

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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