To an approximate scale of 1:19

[Drawing] P[RIMA]. C[ORONA]. PVLCRI. VIDERE. (‘First cornice of the Belvedere’) [Mount] 78 [x2]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines; on laid paper (232x165mm), rounded corners at left, inlaid [Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart; window (225x160mm)

Bernardo della Volpaia

See recto

The Doric order illustrated here, as the caption in antique-style capitals indicates, is that of the bottom storey of the lowest terrace of Bramante’s Cortile del Belvedere, as also seen in two elevational drawings that appear earlier on in the codex (Fols 27r/Ashby 43 and 28r/Ashby 45). An oddity with the depiction is that is shows the triglyph with three channels rather than the conventional two, which is like the triglyphs in Raphael's School of Athens (1509), and may suggest that it was copying an earlier drawing, perhaps even a project. With its innovative triglyphs, it was given prominence in the Coner sequence of Doric capitals and entablatures by being placed immediately after the premier ancient examples from the Theatre of Marcellus and the Basilica Aemilia, the latter being on this drawing’s recto. The depiction is of a similar type to the other Doric drawings in the codex, in combining a measured section with a raking view of the entablature, but it has several further connections with the Basilica Aemilia drawing. To start with, both are labelled in capitals in their top-left corners, both show a pilaster capital together with the upper part of the shaft that is positioned in their bottom-right corners, and both include three triglyphs in the frieze above – although this drawing shows the nearside edge of the right-hand triglyph as being aligned with that of the pilaster beneath it, which is incorrect as the triglyph is actually positioned over the pilaster’s centre. The two, moreover, are similar in making use of ink wash of several different tones, with unusually dark tones being employed for the undersides of various mouldings and for the backgrounds of the decorated coffers between the mutules; and, in this respect, they differ from comparable drawings, such as that of Theatre of Marcellus order, where wash is generally lighter in tone and is much more sparsely used, and where hatching is sometimes employed as an alternative. They are similar, in addition, in that the raking views of the entablatures are shown not in perspective, as is almost always the case with comparable drawings, but in axonometric projection, with the receding lines not converging but running parallel with one another. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the two were regarded by their draftsman as very much a pair, and to presume too that they were produced at a different, perhaps slightly earlier, moment from the other drawings in the sequence. It is also tempting to suppose that they were based on a pair of earlier drawings, and that these may have been executed in Bramante’s circle and perhaps under his direct supervision.

In their design, the two Doric orders are also related, in that the Cortile order, with its mutules beneath the corona, is very much a simplified version of the Basilica Aemilia example, which bears out Antonio Labacco’s observation that Bramante often imitated it (Labacco 1552, fol. 18). The main differences are that much of the decoration is removed, that the architrave is given three rather than two fascias, and that the capital has an additional cyma moulding beneath the echinus following the example of the Colosseum (Fol. 66v/Ashby 114 Drawing 2). The same detail is also illustrated, although frontally and orthogonally, in a drawing in Kassel and in Book Three (1540) of Sebastiano Serlio’s treatise. The Coner drawing was copied by Michelangelo although he made the raking view less steep.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 4Av: left side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 519v; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 128–29)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon.] Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Graphische Sammlung, Kassel Codex, fol. 6r (Günther 1988, p. 368 and pl. 99a); Serlio 1619, fol. 119r

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 15r/Ashby 25; Fol. 27r/Ashby 43; Fol. 27v/Ashby 44; Fol. 28r/Ashby 45; Fol. 28v/Ashby 46); Fol. 53v/Ashby 92; Fol. 54r/Ashby 93; Fol. 68r/Ashby 116; Fol. 69r/Ashby 117; Fol. 72r/Ashby 122

Ashby 1904, p. 43
Ackerman 1954, p. 196

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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