To an approximate scale of 1:15

Sub. istas. corona. Co[n]stantini. (‘Beneath this cornice 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, perhaps added to the sheet at a later moment, is comparable, in its combination of a frontal view from above with a section through half of it, to most other depictions of bases in the codex. This example, as the caption indicates, is from the Arch of Constantine, and is of the Attic variety but with an additional astragal above the upper torus. The shaft above it is shown with its twenty-four flutes (six per quadrant) but with a fillet at the centre rather than a flute, and not cabled as the flutes of the Arch of Constantine columns actually are in their lower reaches. Like many other bases depicted in the codex, it is ‘sliced through’ only a short distance above the base to reveal a peg hole at a height where none would have been. The arrangement of the base standing on a double plinth is correct but unusual, the double plinth being earlier ignored in a sectional drawing in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini. A drawing by Palladio, probably based on one produced well beforehand, combines a section with a view, which also includes the pedestal below, and it depicts both plinths but shows the lower one not as a simple block with vertical faces but one with its faces curving forwards to meet the top of the pedestal. In reality, this plinth has vertical faces except that they finally curve outwards to meet the pedestal right at the bottom (see Desgodetz 1682, p. 237). The drawing was partly copied by Michelangelo to cover a portion of the view on the left.

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), fol. 63r (Hülsen 1910, p. 66); [Andrea Palladio] Vicenza, Museo Civico, D 15v (Zorzi 1958, p. 55; Puppi 1989, p. 106)

OTHER IMAGES IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 33r/Ashby 53; Fol. 51r/Ashby 87, drawing 1; Fol. 52r/Ashby 88; Fol. 62r/Ashby 105; Fol. 68r/Ashby 116

Ashby 1904, p. 45
Census, ID 45154

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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