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Reference number

SM volume 115/83a

Purpose

Drawing 1 (top): Cornice once in Piazza Sant’Eustachio

Aspect

Perspectival elevation of a corner with an overlapping section, with measurements

Scale

To an approximate scale of 1:18

Inscribed

.IN. PLATEA. S. STATII. (‘In Piazza Sant’Eustachio’); [measurements]

Signed and dated

  • c.1513/14
    Datable to c.1513/14

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Notes

This drawing, according to its caption written in antique-style capitals, is of an ancient cornice that was seen in the Piazza of ‘Santo Stazio’ (a corruption of the name Sant’Eustachio), and, Ashby suggested, it may have come from the nearby Baths of Nero. The cornice is otherwise unknown and no other representations of it survive. It is similar in design, however, to one said later on to have been discovered near the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone in Piazza Navona, which is recorded in a drawing in Saint Petersburg; and it also closely resembles the cornice of the Temple of Serapis (Fol. 48r/Ashby 81), being almost identical in the sequence of its mouldings and its ornament, although it is far smaller, being 1 braccio 15 minutes in height (0.73m) rather than 3 braccia (1.75m). In addition, it is depicted in a similar manner to the Temple of Serapis entablature drawing, which was originally on a facing page, their proximity suggesting a wish to group entablatures according to type.

It could be that the discovered fragment was a corner of the cornice, which would be why it was depicted according to the convention that shows it as a corner frontally, and not, as is more usual in Coner representations of cornices and entablatures, as a section combined with a raking view of the front (as in Drawing 4). Showing it in this way, however, does not allow the profile to be represented at all accurately, which would be why, exceptionally for this drawing, the profile was recorded in an overlapping drawing on the right. The sectional portion of the drawing was copied by Michelangelo.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB 4Av: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, pp. 49–50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 122–23)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Saint Petersburg, Hermitage, Codex Destailleur B, fol. 26r (Lanzarini–Martinis 2014, pp. 102–03)

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 44
Census, ID 45073

Level

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

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.


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