The Codex Coburgensis

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Henning Wrede
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 509922363

The Codex Cburgensis consists of not quite 300 drawings by an unknown artist (Mantovan?) working in the mid of the sixteenth century. The drawings present 241sculptures from classical antiquity, which he studied in Rome and its suburbs being interested mostly in reliefs and especially reliefs of sarcophagi, less in statues with special iconographies. The Coburgensis was copied to a great extend by the Codex Pighianus in Berlin. Compared with other collections of Renaissance drawings after the antique both codices belong to the extremely rare Corpus-Typus rarely published because of the large size.Together with Richard Harprath (1938 – 1995) selected drawings were published in the catalogue Der Codex Coburgensis, das erste systematische Archäologiebuch (Coburg 1986) during the funding period of the project. The little book forced an abridged version of the results, which had to be ensured by the present manuscript. The arrangement of the drawings in Corbug is entire confused, but measures and damages allow to reconstruct their origin from a once larger Renaissance album, visualizing its form, disposition and even some sequences of its folios. The album aimed to regain the polytheistic greco-roman religion and its cults on the base of iconography. Therefore the drawings had to reach the best extent of documentary faithfulnesse and to approach the different styles of their ancient models. The manuscript is able to present all drawings, to name their ancient models and to persue their reception in other works of art, interpreting these as a part of the conditional, iconographic and arthistorian history of each item. New are chapters on the way the artist handled and developed his works and on the visited locations. Not delt before is the detailed comparison with similar scientific projects from the 16th to the 18th centuries as well as the evidence to name the album´s author and patron. With all probability they may be identified with Antoine Morillon (Louvain) and Stephanus Pighius (Utrecht), who commissioned the artist in Rome and worked out the album`s concept and arrangement on the instruction of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle in Brussels. From the minister of Charles V and Philipp II the album passed to Hans Jakob Fugger and later to Albecht V of Bavaria. Regarding history of science the Coburgensis and the Pighianus reached their height of importance around 1870, when they became the starting point for the yet not finished Corpus der Antiken Sarkophagreliefs and for the specialized research of all antiqueworks of art known to Renaissance and Barocque.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants