Folio from the Gozzoli Album: Architectural Elements, Including Classical Entablatures and Door Frame from the Pantheon

Author: Albert Elen

This is a folio from a hypothetical lost drawing book, a remnant of which is now part of an eighteenth-century album called the Gozzoli Album, held in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. For a general description, see here.

This page was originally folio 4 recto in the hypothetical lost drawing book (now a verso in the album). The finger smudges in the lower right corner confirm that this was originally a recto page.

This page and the preceding and following pages (folio 15 recto and 16 recto) bear witness to Gozzoli’s strong antiquarian interest and the workshop practice of making copies after classical prototypes when training pupils. Architectural fragments from Roman monuments were often recorded in late-medieval model books and this continued during the Renaissance. An early example is a drawing attributed to Pisanello (1395-1455), now in Paris.^[1]

Judging from the inscription, the large doorframe at top right belongs to the doorframe of the main portal of the Pantheon in Rome. Our drawing, however, was not made on the spot, but copied from an existing drawing.

A very similar drawing of classical entablatures, also a work from the Gozzoli workshop, is now in Vienna.^[2] In fact, the two entablatures on the left are identical to the two on the left in the Vienna drawing, as pointed out by Degenhart/Schmitt. The architectural source is a detail of the Arch of Constantine in Rome. Both drawings were possibly copied after yet another drawing in a different model book, as they slightly differ from the architectural model.

For the architectural drawings on both sides of this sheet (see also folio 15 recto) in the Gozzoli Album the draughtsman made use of a ruler and a sharp stylus, which can be observed from the indented straight lines, visible by raking light.