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Folio 34 verso (Ashby 55): Pyramid of Cestius
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Reference number
SM volume 115/55
Purpose
Folio 34 verso (Ashby 55): Pyramid of Cestius
Aspect
Perspectival elevation and raking side view, with measurements
Scale
To an approximate scale 1:220
Inscribed
[Drawing] [measurements]
[Inscribed on monument] .C. CESTIUS. L. F. POPVLO. PR. TR./ .PL. VII. VIR. EPVLORVM
(= CIL, 6, 1374: C[AIVS] CESTIVS L[VCI] F[ILIVS] POB[LILIA] EPVLO PR[AETOR] TR[IBVNVS] PL[EBIS]/ VIIVIR EPVLONVM […])
[Mount] 55 [x2]
Signed and dated
- c.1513/14
Datable to c.1513/14
Medium and dimensions
[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines; on laid paper (168x232mm), inlaid (rotated clockwise through 90 degrees with respect to original foliation)
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart (window 160x225mm)
Hand
Bernardo della Volpaia
Watermark
See recto
Notes
The marble-faced pyramid, located at the southern edge of the ancient city, was constructed by 12 BCE as the sepulchre of Gaius Cestius (Claridge 2010, pp. 397–401) a magistrate and member of the Septemviri epulonum, a body responsible for arranging public banquets for festivals and games. Its original function as the tomb of this official was long forgotten in the middle ages and by the fifteenth century it was believed to be the tomb of Remus, one of Rome’s legendary founders (Edificazione 1480, fol. 9r; Census, ID 237170). This mistaken tradition had been overturned by the late fifteenth century when the main inscription was noted by Bernardo Rucellai in his De urbe Roma (Valentini–Zucchetti 1953, p. 455), and the monument was subsequently recognised as being a burial tomb by Francesco Albertini in his guide to Rome who also recorded all its inscriptions in full (Albertini 1510, 2, chapter 14, fol. Riiii r). The Coner drawing reproduces the main part of the large-scale dedicatory inscription on the pyramid’s southern face but, as Ashby noted, there are significant errors: ‘populo’ in the first line should read pob[lilia] epulo, and ‘epulorum’ in the second line should read epulonum. It omits the smaller inscription that follows beneath, which records that the monument was completed in 330 days under the direction of the deceased’s son and a freedman named Pothos (CIL, 6, 1374).
The Coner drawing is the earliest surviving depiction of the monument to bear measurements of height and width, but these are given not at the base but at some distance above. This becomes understandable when early views of the pyramid such as one in the Codex Escurialensis and another in the Coded Salzburg are considered, which show it not only partly immured into the later Aurelian Wall but also party buried. The drawing gives the pyramid’s height as 55 braccia (32.1m), which is far less than its actual height of 36.5m, implying that the ground level then was over four metres higher than it is today. Among the few surviving images of the pyramid from this early period, it is alone in attempting to provide what can be thought of as an architecturally accurate rendition of its subject. Other early drawings, such as those in the Codex Escurialensis and Codex Salzburg, include it in topographical views, or else they focus on the inscription, treating the building and its marble coursework in a rather summary way, as is the case with depictions in the so-called Brunelleschi sketchbook of c.1509 and the Codex Pighianus of the 1550s. In the Coner drawing, although the pyramid is represented as rising rather more sharply than it actually does, and the stone courses are made rather more regular than they actually are, these are still shown roughly in scale with the pyramid as a whole, with the corners indicating that the marble revetment has about the right amount of thickness, a matter ignored in other images that survive.
Apart from indicating the pyramid’s main inscription, the drawing, as with those of other monuments that have their inscriptions recorded, does not provide any further identifying caption. It is grouped with these other elevational drawings, but it is still rather oddly placed and its position remains puzzling. It comes in the middle of a run of triumphal arches, and, even though it is like the triumphal arches in being a commemorative structure, it still breaks that sequence up. It was mounted in the seventeenth century at right angles to its original orientation in order to privilege the drawing of the Arch of Septimius Severus on the recto.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, 28-II-12 (Codex Escurialensis), fol. 70r (Egger 1905–06, p. 119); [Anon.] Salzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, H 193/1 v; [Battista Brunelleschi] Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, A. 78.1 (Brunelleschi Sketchbook), fol. 6r; [Anon.] Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Ms. lat. fol. 61 (Codex Pighianus), fol. 124v
The Coner drawing is the earliest surviving depiction of the monument to bear measurements of height and width, but these are given not at the base but at some distance above. This becomes understandable when early views of the pyramid such as one in the Codex Escurialensis and another in the Coded Salzburg are considered, which show it not only partly immured into the later Aurelian Wall but also party buried. The drawing gives the pyramid’s height as 55 braccia (32.1m), which is far less than its actual height of 36.5m, implying that the ground level then was over four metres higher than it is today. Among the few surviving images of the pyramid from this early period, it is alone in attempting to provide what can be thought of as an architecturally accurate rendition of its subject. Other early drawings, such as those in the Codex Escurialensis and Codex Salzburg, include it in topographical views, or else they focus on the inscription, treating the building and its marble coursework in a rather summary way, as is the case with depictions in the so-called Brunelleschi sketchbook of c.1509 and the Codex Pighianus of the 1550s. In the Coner drawing, although the pyramid is represented as rising rather more sharply than it actually does, and the stone courses are made rather more regular than they actually are, these are still shown roughly in scale with the pyramid as a whole, with the corners indicating that the marble revetment has about the right amount of thickness, a matter ignored in other images that survive.
Apart from indicating the pyramid’s main inscription, the drawing, as with those of other monuments that have their inscriptions recorded, does not provide any further identifying caption. It is grouped with these other elevational drawings, but it is still rather oddly placed and its position remains puzzling. It comes in the middle of a run of triumphal arches, and, even though it is like the triumphal arches in being a commemorative structure, it still breaks that sequence up. It was mounted in the seventeenth century at right angles to its original orientation in order to privilege the drawing of the Arch of Septimius Severus on the recto.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, 28-II-12 (Codex Escurialensis), fol. 70r (Egger 1905–06, p. 119); [Anon.] Salzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, H 193/1 v; [Battista Brunelleschi] Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, A. 78.1 (Brunelleschi Sketchbook), fol. 6r; [Anon.] Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Ms. lat. fol. 61 (Codex Pighianus), fol. 124v
Literature
Ashby 1904, p. 36
Census, ID 44498
Census, ID 44498
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