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  • image Adam vol.55/38
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/38

Purpose

Scotland: Edinburgh, Adam Mausoleum. Academic study for a section through a mausoleum of three bays, divided by semi-engaged columns with spiral fluting on a base of relief sculpture, with three statues of seated figures in niches. Above is more sculpture and a coffered and compartmented dome with oculus.

Aspect

Section

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 38

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756 - 57

Medium and dimensions

Pen204 x 202

Hand

Robert Adam

Watermark

grapes [?]

Notes

This is an enlarged version of the section shown in Adam vol.55/37 through the unbuilt scheme for the Adam Mausoleum in Edinburgh, Scotland. The three plaques between the column capitals are inscribed: 'Lista delle anime di Purgatorie'; 'Pater Noster de Ave Maria'; 'Plena et[?] Indulgenzia', all of which would have made strange reading in a Protestant churchyard. In Adam vol.56/2 there is a view by Robert Adam of the Mausoleum in Greyfriars' Churchyard, Edinburgh that was completed in October 1755; there is also a pencil drawing for the 'Adamian Sepulchre' in the Blair Adam Collection (BA 201); both predate the scheme shown here, which is probably 1756-57.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).