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  • image Adam vol.55/91
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/91

Purpose

Capriccio, probably unfinished, showing part of the interior of an octagonal building with a steep dome supported by grouped columns. On either side are two coffered niches with panel reliefs above.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 91

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Pen122 x 151

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

There are several exercises of this sort with alternating openings under a dome, see Adam vol.55/90, 94, 103 and 147. The drawing is similar in composition and draughtsmanship to 55/90, and both can be compared with the interior view in 55/94. It may also be related to 55/143 verso and Adam vol.4/88; it may be a variation on the interior of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Rome, which particularly interested Robert Adam (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.352; and Clerk Collection, Scotland, Clerk 4).

Level

Drawing

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

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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).