Elevation of entablature: the cornice from the Arch of Constantine, the architrave from the Basilica of Constantine, Rome. One of eight drawings by a single hand bound into Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Architectura Civile album, at the beginning of a section devoted to architectural details (RCIN 910417–424, see 910417). 

T. Ashby recognized the upper cornice as that drawn in the 'Codex Coner', which Bernardo della Volpaia locates as ‘immured in the Arch of Constantine’: it can still be seen inside the attic (London, Sir John Soane's Museum, ‘Codex Coner’, no. 105b; Ashby, unpublished notes, British School at Rome, POZ-422; ‘Sixteenth-century drawings of Roman buildings attributed to Andreas Coner’, Papers of the British School at Rome, II, 1904, p.51). The present drawing omits the decoration of the top cyma recta and the fluting of the dripstone. It was drawn several times during the Renaissance, by Giuliano da Sangallo among others.

The architrave below is that of the entablature block of the Basilica of Constantine, notable for its cavetto moulding at the top. It, too, was frequently drawn in the Renaissance and appears in Palladio’s Quattro libri (IV, p.14) and in one of the seventeenth-century copies after Palladio acquired by Carlo Antonio (present location unknown; previously Stirling-Maxwell Architecture Album, fol. 55 (ii)).

Text adapted from Ian Campbell, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné. A.IX: Ancient Roman Topography, London 2004, cat.10.