To an approximate scale of 1:25

[Drawing] 65 [early seventeenth-century hand] .Triarum. colunna[rum]. (‘Of the three columns’); [measurements]
[Mount] 85 [x2]; 3 Columns, Campo Vaccino, Rome [in pencil]/ [later hand] Temple of Castor [in pencil]

• 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 right, inlaid (window on verso of mount)
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart

Bernardo della Volpaia

[Drawing] None [Mount] Crown topped with six-pointed star (variant 1; cut by bottom edge of window)

The Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum, often misidentified in the Renaissance as the Temple of Jupiter Stator, was generally known, as in this drawing’s caption, as the ‘three columns’, in reference to the standing remains that date from the early first century CE (see Cat. Fol. 41r/Ashby 67). The entablature is broadly similar in composition to many others of Corinthian temples, including other examples illustrated in the codex (see Fols 49v/Ashby 84, 51v/Ashby 88, 52r/Ashby 89 and 52v/Ashby 90), although several of its features are distinctive, such as the architrave’s slightly canted lower fascia, the richly ornamented middle fascia, the band of egg-and-dart positioned below rather than above the dentils, the face of the corona embellished with fluting, and the further band placed below the cyma at the top (cf. Desgodetz 1682, p. 129). The richly ornamented capital (not shown here) is itself very unusual in having a pair of interlocking tendrils at the centre.

In format, the Coner drawing differs from the much earlier drawing of the entablature in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Codex Barberini, which shows it from the front, and it is one of several dating from the early sixteenth century that follow a new convention of combining a cross section with a perspectival view of the front. One of these other drawings, in the Uffizi but curiously overlooked by Ashby, turns out to be of immense relevance to the codex. It is plainly the work of the same draughtsman, and its author is actually identified, in the hand of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, as a certain ‘Bernardo’, which is what led to the realisation that the codex was the work of Bernardo della Volpaia (Buddensieg 1975). It was also observed that the Uffizi drawing is close in size to the one in the codex, and is annotated with very similar measurements, although the two sets are not identical. Moreover, in the Uffizi drawing there are three minor errors in the detailing of the cornice, which were noted by Antonio, whereas in the Coner drawing these errors are remedied. They are (1) the lack of a fillet between the lower egg-and-dart moulding and the band of dentils above it; (2) the excessive size of the blocks in between the dentils; and (3) the absence of a pair of fillets between the ornamented cyma reversa moulding and the row of modillions. It was concluded from this that the Uffizi drawing predated its Coner counterpart, and it was further argued that Antonio had previously commissioned the Uffizi drawing from Bernardo, on the presumption that Bernardo was working in his immediate orbit, and that he had drawn Bernardo’s attention to the errors which were then rectified for the Coner drawing.

There is, however, another way of explaining the relationship between the two drawings. This is that they are both responses to a now-lost but very exacting depiction of the entablature that had recently been produced by another draughtsman from first-hand observation. On the basis of this more accurate drawing, Bernardo would have produced a suitably revised version for inclusion in the codex, amending an earlier drawing by him which then passed into the hands of Antonio, who could have independently made note of its errors. The existence of a lost original would explain the sketch on the verso of the Uffizi sheet (discussed by Buddensieg 1975, pp. 89–94), which is from the hand of Antonio’s brother Giovanni Battista da Sangallo. This drawing is not itself an original survey – since it is sketched on the back of Bernardo’s drawing – but a copy of one, and it is rendered mainly as an orthogonal section but with a suggestion of a raking view provided by an additional modillion on the left, implying that the original may well have been of the section-plus-view format. The lost original may have also provided a source for several other surviving depictions of the entablature produced later on. One of these is a drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi of the late 1520s or early 1530s, seemingly copied from a previous image (since it is included on a sheet of miscellaneous studies), which follows the same format of section-plus-view and is also accompanied by an orthogonal depiction (at a slightly larger scale) of the capital. Other early sixteenth-century drawings in the Uffizi of the same format by anonymous draughtsmen (GDSU, 1953 Ar, 1762 Av, 7997 Ar and 7988 Ar) show the entablature alone. A highly comparable image from a later time is the engraving, again just of the entablature in section-plus-view format, that was included by Antonio Labacco in his Libro appartenente a l’architettura (1552).

The drawing is the largest one of a Corinthian entablature in the codex and it is one of only two to be allotted an entire page – the other being from the Pantheon (Fol. 50v/Ashby 86) – which would be a measure both of its intrinsic interest and of its increasingly high regard. Baldassare Peruzzi, in an annotation to his drawing, expressed the view that the entablature, with the accompanying capital, was ‘the most beautiful and best executed work in Rome’ (Questa e la piu bella e meglio lauorata op[er]a di roma; see Campbell 1984 pp. 237–38; Clarke 1997), and Labacco – naming the building the Temple of Jupiter Stator – made a near-identical comment in his treatise (Labacco 1552, fol. 20). Similar opinions, moreover, were later expressed by both Philibert de l’Orme (1567, fols 192r and 194r) and Andrea Palladio (1570, 4, p. 67). The drawing was copied by Michelangelo. Perhaps because the identifying caption was less than clear, the entablature was also identified in more recent times on the mount, firstly as the ‘3 Columns, Campo Vaccino, Rome‘ and subsequently as the ’Temple of Castor’.

RELATED IMAGES: [Michelangelo] Florence, CB, 3Ar: left side (De Tolnay 1975–80, 4, p. 50; Agosti–Farinella 1987, pp. 116–17)

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 11v (Hülsen 1910, p. 21; Borsi 1985, p. 92); [Bernardo della Volpaia] Florence, GDSU, 1181 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 71–72; Buddensieg 1975, pp. 89–95; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, pp. 129–30); [Giovanni Battista da Sangallo] Florence, GDSU, 1181 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 71–72; Buddensieg 1975, pp. 92–94; Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, pp. 129–30); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 478 Av+631 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 59; Wurm 1984, pl. 459); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 1953 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 111); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 1762 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 111); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 7997 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 20); [Anon.] Florence, GDSU, 7998 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 20); Labacco 1552, unpaginated (fols 20–22)

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 41r/Ashby 67; Fol. 81r/Ashby 134

Ashby 1904, p. 45
Buddensieg 1975, pp. 89–94
Census, ID 45115

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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