[3] Stage I: tomb with a pendentive dome on four piers enclosing a four-sided Ionic aedicule, 11 February 1816

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Monuments and mausolea
  - London: St Giles in the Fields burial ground (now St Pancras Gardens), Camden: Soane monument [the 'Soane Tomb'], 1816, 1828 (47)

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Reference number

SM 63/7/26

Purpose

[3] Stage I: tomb with a pendentive dome on four piers enclosing a four-sided Ionic aedicule, 11 February 1816

Aspect

Perspective of tomb, the piers with rusticated piers (smooth blocks, emphasised joints)

Scale

to a scale

Signed and dated

datable to 11 February 1816 and certainly made before the drawings dated 14 February 1816 that follow see Notes below

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, burnt umber, warm sepia and yellow ochre washes, shaded, pricked for transfer on laid paper (435 x 370)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and PS below

Notes

C. Woodward in M. Richardson and M. Stevens (editors), John Soane architect: master of space and light, 1999, p.198, dates this drawing to the afternoon of Sunday 11 February 1815. Soane's Note Book entry for that date has '... At home the rest of the day about Monument &c'.

This drawing and drawing SM 63/7/27 establish the basic form of the monument which is a monolithic pendentive or canopy dome with four segmental openings (pediments) supported at each corner by a pier. This canopy encloses a four-sided aedicule in the form of a double cube, crowned on each face by a triangular pediment finished at each end by a scroll, and with four Ionic colums (one at each corner). The drawings differ only in the treatment of the piers - rusticated or (the preferred treatment) panelled. Both have a sketchy indication of an oculus to the dome.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

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