To an approximate scale of 1:7

.REPERTA. FVIT. APVD. S./ .MARIAM. MINERVAE. (‘It was discovered near Santa Maria of Minerva’); [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 runs close up against its neighbour which was drawn after it and fitted around it (see Cat. Drawing 1). It is of the same perspectival format and it has similar shortcomings which, in this instance, were caused both by the draughtman’s evident difficulties with the format and by the drawing being positioned too near the sheet’s left-hand edge. They are seen, again, in the insufficient projection of the corona, which is then exacerbated by the shortage space for the crowning cyma that required it to be offset to the right. The entablature is drawn as if it were a corner, but whether the now-lost fragment was an actual corner or the drawing was simply following a representational convention is unclear.

The cornice, as the caption in antique-style capitals states, was discovered near the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, most probably behind the church and near the so-called Arco di Camigliano, this information provided by an elevational drawing by Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo from around the same period of an entablature of identical design, which has an annotation indicating that it was ‘in the ground’ by the arch and had recently been excavated (in terra dall archo di chamigliano chauata di nuouo). The same location is also given in drawings of the cornice by Baldassare Peruzzi and in the Mellon Codex (Lembke 1994, pp. 147–52). The now-vanished Arco di Camigliano, which stood near the present-day Piazza del Collegio Romano, was one of the entrances into the Iseum, and the cornice would have come from this temple precinct.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giovanni Francesco da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1703 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 102; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, p. 204); [Domenico Aima (il Varignana), attr.] New York, Morgan Library, Codex Mellon, fol. 31r; [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 486 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 50; Wurm 1984, pl. 440)

Ashby 1904, p. 45
Lembke 1994, p. 148
Census, ID 45150

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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