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Folio 35 recto (Ashby 56): Arch of Titus
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Reference number
SM volume 115/56
Purpose
Folio 35 recto (Ashby 56): Arch of Titus
Aspect
Perspectival elevation, with measurements
Scale
To an approximate scale of 1:110
Inscribed
[Drawing] 49 [early seventeenth-century hand]
[Inscribed on monument] .SENATVS./ POPVLVS. QVE. ROMANVS./ DIVO. TITO. DIVI. VESPASIANI. F./ VESPASIANO. AVGVSTO
(= CIL, 6, 945: SENATVS/ POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS/ DIVO TITO DIVI VESPASIANI F[ILIO]/ VESPASIANO AVGVSTO)
[Mount] 56 [x2]; Arch of Titus. [in pencil]
Signed and dated
- c.1513/14
Datable to c.1513/14
Medium and dimensions
[Drawing] Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over compass pricks; on laid paper (230x163mm), one rounded corner at bottom right, inlaid (window on verso of mount)
[Mount] Frame lines, in pen and dark brown ink, 10mm apart
Hand
Bernardo della Volpaia
Watermark
[Drawing] Anchor in circle topped with six-pointed star (variant 4; cut at left) [Mount] Fleur-de-lys in circle surmounted with crown (variant 3; cut at bottom edge of window)
Notes
The three-bay Arch of Titus was constructed around 81 CE, celebrating the Roman victory in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), and it stands at the eastern end of the Via Sacra not far from the Colosseum (Pfanner 1983; LTUR 1993–2000, 1, pp. 109–11). During the middle ages it was incorporated into a fortress owned by the Frangipani family and made into a fortified tower, which helped to preserve it. Its condition in the mid- sixteenth century is recorded in a topographical drawing of the 1530s from the circle of Maarten van Heemskerck and later drawings by Giovannantonio Dosio, which show that the side bays on both faces were badly damaged or obscured, and that the inscription tablet in the attic only survived on the front facing the Colosseum (see Campbell 2004, 1, pp. 253–54). It remained in that state until the early nineteenth century, before being radically restored by Raffaele Stern and Giuseppe Valadier in 1823 (Caffiero 2021).
The Coner drawing shows the front of the arch facing the Colosseum, together with a raking view of the right-hand side (the format used for many others in the codex), and it was conceived in a manner very unlike other representations of the structure from the early Renaissance period. The aim was to record, perhaps with some limited extrapolation, only the ancient parts of the structure and to omit all later accretions, especially those above the attic. It thus shows the barrel-vaulted central bay with its framing half-columns and the inscription plaque above it, little of the fragmentary left bay, which was covered over in van Heemskerck’s time although freed from obstructions by Dosio’s, and rather more of the right bay, again partly hidden, to include the visible portion of the window-shaped aperture with the accurately recorded panel above it.
Before the time of the Codex Coner, the arch was often shown, because of its fragmentary condition, as being just one bay in width. It appears this way, for example, in the Codex Escurialensis and in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Taccuino Senese, although in his Codex Barberini the structure is extended at the sides to include space for a pair of window-shaped apertures, while an invented pediment is added at the arch’s top. The Coner drawing, therefore, marks an abrupt departure from this tradition, by being so much more scrupulous in what it records, and also by being much more attentive to the particularities of the design, as is further confirmed by the various further depictions in the codex of the arch’s details. It thus registers that the central barrel vault has a central coffer that is much larger than the others; and it interprets the supports beneath the Composite half-columns not as pedestals, which how they were represented by Giuliano da Sangallo and in a copy drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi – as well as in Desgodetz’ s later illustration (Desgodetz 1682, pp. 178–79) – but as part of a continuous ledge extending to the structure’s corner, as likewise recorded in drawings by Giovanni Battista da Sangallo and Palladio, and seen in the nineteenth-century reconstructed version of the arch. At the corners, the drawing implies some sort of continuation of the base mouldings of the half-columns flanking the archway, although it does not propose terminal half-columns, as Giovanni Battista da Sangallo and Palladio – and many others – would do subsequently. Although these elements would not have been visible owing to the arch’s losses and abutting structures, it nevertheless appears that sufficient evidence survived to allow them to be recorded in the way that they were.
Like many others in the codex, the drawing does not include the structure’s sculptural embellishments and it is schematic in its detailing. It also misrepresents certain occasional features such as the decoration in the soffits of the archivolts, at the front and back, as scrolls rather than a succession of acanthus bulbs. As the drawing was done by eye, with the dimensions being added subsequently as annotations, the structure’s depicted proportions are, like the other drawings especially of arches, decidedly unreliable. The half-columns have their height given as 10.4 braccia, or 6.07m, a figure considerably less than that indicated by Desgodetz in 1682 of 6.64m (20 French feet and 5 inches), and they are also too low in relation both to the distance between them, and to the height of the inscription panel above. Apart from recording the attic inscription, which is also given by Francesco Albertini in his guidebook to Rome (Albertini 1510, 2, chapter 8, fol. Pii r), the drawing lacks any identifying caption, which is why one was added in the nineteenth century to the mount.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Siena, BCS, Ms. S.IV.8 (Taccuino Senese), fol. 26r (Borsi 1985, pp. 134–37); [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 23r (Hülsen 1910, p. 32; Borsi 1985, pp. 134–37); [Anon.] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, 28-II-12 (Codex Escurialensis), fol. 47r (Egger 1905–06, p. 120); [Giovanni Battista da Sangallo] London, RIBA, Codex Rootstein-Hopkins, fol. 1r (Campbell–Nesselrath 2006, p. 29; Campbell in Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, p. 238); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 478 Ar and 631 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 58–59; Wurm 1984, pl. 457); [Circle of Maarten van Heemskerck] Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. 79 D 2a (Heemskerck Album II), fol. 56r (Hülsen–Egger 1913–16, 2, p. 34); [Andrea Palladio] Vicenza, Museo Civico, D 10r (Zorzi 1958, pp. 55–56; Puppi 1989, p. 104); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, GDSU, 3995 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 133); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Windsor, RL, 10785 (Campbell 2004, 1, pp. 253–54)
OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 56r/Ashby 95; Fol. 57r/Ashby 97; Fol. 80r/Ashby 134; Fol. 82v/Ashby 137; Fol. 89r/Ashby 147
The Coner drawing shows the front of the arch facing the Colosseum, together with a raking view of the right-hand side (the format used for many others in the codex), and it was conceived in a manner very unlike other representations of the structure from the early Renaissance period. The aim was to record, perhaps with some limited extrapolation, only the ancient parts of the structure and to omit all later accretions, especially those above the attic. It thus shows the barrel-vaulted central bay with its framing half-columns and the inscription plaque above it, little of the fragmentary left bay, which was covered over in van Heemskerck’s time although freed from obstructions by Dosio’s, and rather more of the right bay, again partly hidden, to include the visible portion of the window-shaped aperture with the accurately recorded panel above it.
Before the time of the Codex Coner, the arch was often shown, because of its fragmentary condition, as being just one bay in width. It appears this way, for example, in the Codex Escurialensis and in Giuliano da Sangallo’s Taccuino Senese, although in his Codex Barberini the structure is extended at the sides to include space for a pair of window-shaped apertures, while an invented pediment is added at the arch’s top. The Coner drawing, therefore, marks an abrupt departure from this tradition, by being so much more scrupulous in what it records, and also by being much more attentive to the particularities of the design, as is further confirmed by the various further depictions in the codex of the arch’s details. It thus registers that the central barrel vault has a central coffer that is much larger than the others; and it interprets the supports beneath the Composite half-columns not as pedestals, which how they were represented by Giuliano da Sangallo and in a copy drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi – as well as in Desgodetz’ s later illustration (Desgodetz 1682, pp. 178–79) – but as part of a continuous ledge extending to the structure’s corner, as likewise recorded in drawings by Giovanni Battista da Sangallo and Palladio, and seen in the nineteenth-century reconstructed version of the arch. At the corners, the drawing implies some sort of continuation of the base mouldings of the half-columns flanking the archway, although it does not propose terminal half-columns, as Giovanni Battista da Sangallo and Palladio – and many others – would do subsequently. Although these elements would not have been visible owing to the arch’s losses and abutting structures, it nevertheless appears that sufficient evidence survived to allow them to be recorded in the way that they were.
Like many others in the codex, the drawing does not include the structure’s sculptural embellishments and it is schematic in its detailing. It also misrepresents certain occasional features such as the decoration in the soffits of the archivolts, at the front and back, as scrolls rather than a succession of acanthus bulbs. As the drawing was done by eye, with the dimensions being added subsequently as annotations, the structure’s depicted proportions are, like the other drawings especially of arches, decidedly unreliable. The half-columns have their height given as 10.4 braccia, or 6.07m, a figure considerably less than that indicated by Desgodetz in 1682 of 6.64m (20 French feet and 5 inches), and they are also too low in relation both to the distance between them, and to the height of the inscription panel above. Apart from recording the attic inscription, which is also given by Francesco Albertini in his guidebook to Rome (Albertini 1510, 2, chapter 8, fol. Pii r), the drawing lacks any identifying caption, which is why one was added in the nineteenth century to the mount.
OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Giuliano da Sangallo] Siena, BCS, Ms. S.IV.8 (Taccuino Senese), fol. 26r (Borsi 1985, pp. 134–37); [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 23r (Hülsen 1910, p. 32; Borsi 1985, pp. 134–37); [Anon.] El Escorial, Real Monasterio, 28-II-12 (Codex Escurialensis), fol. 47r (Egger 1905–06, p. 120); [Giovanni Battista da Sangallo] London, RIBA, Codex Rootstein-Hopkins, fol. 1r (Campbell–Nesselrath 2006, p. 29; Campbell in Frommel–Schelbert 2022, 1, p. 238); [Baldassare Peruzzi] Florence, GDSU, 478 Ar and 631 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, pp. 58–59; Wurm 1984, pl. 457); [Circle of Maarten van Heemskerck] Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. 79 D 2a (Heemskerck Album II), fol. 56r (Hülsen–Egger 1913–16, 2, p. 34); [Andrea Palladio] Vicenza, Museo Civico, D 10r (Zorzi 1958, pp. 55–56; Puppi 1989, p. 104); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, GDSU, 3995 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 133); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Windsor, RL, 10785 (Campbell 2004, 1, pp. 253–54)
OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 56r/Ashby 95; Fol. 57r/Ashby 97; Fol. 80r/Ashby 134; Fol. 82v/Ashby 137; Fol. 89r/Ashby 147
Literature
Ashby 1904, p. 36
Census, ID 44518
Census, ID 44518
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