Inscribed
Inscribed in ink on drawing 144
Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Black chalk, grey wash
228 x 343
Hand
Robert Adam
Verso
Capricci in pencil of four plans and three elevations. Two of the plans, one of which is unfinished, show a courtyarded building with a circular columned hall; another plan is for part of a quadrant with two pavilions, with the elevation above. The fourth plan is of the interior of a rectangular hall, above which is an elevation of two coffered niches with a three-bay screen of columns. The most finished of the elevations can be compared with Adam vol.55/141 and the elevations and plans with the two elevations in Adam vol.55/146 recto.
Watermark
partial names
Notes
The perspective is similar in character to one of the pavilions that constitute the sixteenth-century Villa Pia in the Vatican, Rome. It may also be compared with the small Temple of Clitumnus at Spoleto, Italy, which Robert Adam knew from Palladio as well as having visited in September 1755 (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.180). His studies of the temple are in the Clerk Collection, Scotland (see Clerk 163-7).
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural,
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