To an approximate scale of 1:7

[hidden by mount] .CORONA. ARCHI. COSTANTINI. (‘Cornice of the Arch of Constantine’)

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

This drawing is rather misleadingly identified by its caption, written in antique-style capitals, as the Arch of Constantine’s ‘cornice’, but it is not the one of the main entablature drawn on the previous page (Fol. 51r/Ashby 87) or the one from the very top of the monument depicted later on (Fol. 68r/Ashby 116). Rather, it is one of the imposts of the central arch, which, most unusually, are in the forms of cornices, and have dentils that are curiously hollowed out. It accords with the preferred format in the codex for showing corners of entablatures and cornices, that is in perspective with the corner at the left and the vanishing point near the drawing’s right edge, which was also followed in the previous drawing of the main entablature. In this instance, however, it represents an actual corner, and does so fairly accurately. The defects evident in the previous drawing are partly remedied inasmuch as the corona extends sufficiently to the left to allow for a square coffer at the corner and a partial side view of the modillion behind. The frontal modillions that are seen from beneath are slightly distorted because of the mishandling of the foreshortening.

Two similar depictions of the same impost – using the same representational conventions – are included in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini, although these are both without measurements. Neither of them appears to have been the source for this drawing, as the constituent mouldings seen here differ in number and shape, with an additional moulding being incorrectly inserted just above the roll moulding at the bottom, and the moulding under the modillions being shown correctly as a quadrant rather than a cyma. Another early drawing at Chatsworth by the Anonymous Italian C of 1519 is like the Coner drawing in showing the quadrant correctly, but like the Sangallo drawings in not leaving a space between the roll moulding and the beads. Other sixteenth-century drawings, such as one by Palladio based on an earlier prototype, record it in section-plus-view format. The Coner drawing was partly copied by Michelangelo.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] London, BM, 1859-6-25-560/2r (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 45; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 98–99)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fols 11v and 20r (Hülsen 1910, pp. 21–22 and 30; Borsi 1985, pp. 91–93 and 116–22; [Anonymous Italian C of 1519] Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection, Album 32, fol. 6v (Günther 1988, p. 343 and pl. 47b); [Andrea Palladio] London, RIBA, Palladio 12, 5v (Zorzi 1958, p. 55)

OTHER IMAGES IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 33r/Ashby 53; Fol. 51r/Ashby 87; Fol. 62r/Ashby 105; Fol. 68r/Ashby 116

Ashby 1904, p. 46
Census, ID 48872

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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