To an approximate scale of 1:50

.HOSTIVM. MILITIA[RUM] (‘Door of the military)

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash

Bernardo della Volpaia

The drawing’s caption ‘door of the military’ – written in the frieze in ancient-style capitals like an inscription – suggests that this notable portal, with its framing columns and pediment, was seen near the thirteenth-century Torre delle Milizie that rises above Trajan’s Market, and that it probably belonged to an ancient structure in the vicinity, or possibly, as Ashby proposed, to the north-eastern exedra of the Forum of Trajan situated to the southeast of the tower. The portal is otherwise known only from a drawing in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini, although the two may not be directly related. The Barberini drawing is very like the Coner depiction but it is more particular in its representation of details, such as the Ionic capitals of the columns, which have oversized volutes not unlike the ones Sangallo designed for the forecourt of Santa Maria Maddalena de’Pazzi in Florence (1491). Details in the Coner drawing tend to be simplified, such as those of the entablature and pediment, as well as the architrave bordering the aperture and the bases of the columns (here just simple toruses rather than the Attic variety), and the threshold beneath them is omitted. The mode of representation too is different, since the Barberini drawing is orthogonal and the Coner depiction is perspectival, with the vantage point as usual to the right, which allows the columns to be seen as standing well forward of the wall surface behind. The measurements specified on the Coner drawing, moreover, are far more numerous. To judge from the lack of any other early representations, the portal presumably disappeared not long after the Coner drawing’s execution.

This drawing and its companion to the right are two of only four portals illustrated in the compilation (see also Fols 20r/Ashby 32 and 53r/Ashby 91). They were presumably included on this particular page to fill up space below the Pantheon section that happened to be available.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 38v (Hülsen 1910, p. 55; Borsi 1985, pp. 198–200)

Ashby 1904, p. 38
Census, ID 44753

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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