To an approximate scale of 1:30

.C[ORONA]. PALATII. MERCEN[N]ATIS. (‘Cornice of the Palace of Maecenas’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

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

Bernardo della Volpaia

The entablature and pediment corner, with an acroterion above it, that is shown here is from the building on the Quirinal Hill now usually regarded as having been the Temple of Serapis. It was then known as the ‘Palace of Maecenas’ (cf. Fol. 39v/Ashby 64 Drawing 1), and the drawing’s caption, written in antique-style capitals, identifies it as such. Only a small portion of the entablature and pediment had survived, this being the right corner of the temple’s rear elevation, which is recorded in various sixteenth-century drawings and prints. The Coner drawing shows instead a left-hand corner, suggesting it was based on an earlier drawing that had been reversed rather than on the surviving fragment directly. The chosen format is one that is occasionally seen elsewhere in the codex for representing corners of entablatures (see e.g. Fol. 49r/Ashby 83), the entablature’s front being depicted perspectivally, with the viewpoint towards the right and low enough down to allow the distinctive two-tier modillions to be readily seen as carrying a corona that projects well in front of them; and it also shows the receding left-hand side of the entablature consistently, so that only the first modillion is visible. A small portion of the entablature still survives (Mattern 2001, pp. 175–76), and its composition is observed with a reasonable degree accuracy (cf. Desgodetz 1682, p. 149), although the decoration is minimally indicated, and the swirling acanthus ornamentation of the frieze is omitted entirely.

It appears that numerous drawings of the entablature were in circulation by this time, this strongly implied by there being as many as three different versions of it in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini, although none of these provides an exact counterpart to the Coner depiction: what is presumably the earliest, is a rather inaccurate perspectival view of the corner and the end of the pediment (fol. 10r); another is an orthogonal rendition of the corner that also includes the side of the pilaster capital on the flanking wall (fol. 68v), and the third, a perspectival frontal view combined with a raking view of the side, shows it, like the Coner image, the wrong way around (fol. 63v), but it differs from the Coner representation by minimising the front and concentrating on the side. Especially intriguing is a perspectival representation produced by an associate of Michelangelo perhaps just a short time afterwards, which must have been derived from an earlier drawing likewise showing the entablature perspectivally and the wrong way around, although it is unlike the Coner depiction in omitting the pediment and recording the ornament differently. The Coner drawing thus belongs to a family of very similar early representations, although it was seemingly based most directly on a prototype that is now lost. Other draftsmen increasingly favoured orthogonal representations, these including the anonymous author of the Codex Strozzi; but Andrea Palladio later on produced a pair of copy drawings on the same sheet, one in section-plus-raking-view format but the other showing the entablature perspectivally and dependant on the same early family, being similar to the third Codex Barberini drawing, but now recording its subject the correct way around.

The drawing is the first of a series of Corinthian entablatures in the codex and it was partly 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: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fols 10r, 63v and 68v (Hülsen 1910, pp. 18, 67–68 and 71; Borsi 1985, pp. 228–36); [Circle of Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 5Ar: right side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 46); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, Codex Strozzi, 1591 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 29); [Andrea Palladio] London, RIBA, Palladio 9, 18v (Zorzi 1958, p. 75)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 39v/Ashby 64; Fol. 48r/Ashby 81 Drawing 2 on this page

Ashby 1904, p. 43
Census, ID 44669

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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