Capriccio showing a gorge or pass cut through mountains, beside which is a sarcophagus; above is a large Gothic cathedral-like structure with pyramid-topped towers and battlements. This is just below a circular domed structure with columns and vaulting, with another building in the distance.

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Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam volume 54, Series 4 and 5

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Reference number

Adam vol.54/Series 5/18

Purpose

Capriccio showing a gorge or pass cut through mountains, beside which is a sarcophagus; above is a large Gothic cathedral-like structure with pyramid-topped towers and battlements. This is just below a circular domed structure with columns and vaulting, with another building in the distance.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 18

Signed and dated

Undated, probably 1755 or 1757

Medium and dimensions

Pen210 x 184

Hand

Robert Adam

Watermark

crown, royal arms

Notes

The cathedral-like building in this composition is similar in style to those in the Gothic section of this volume, Adam vol.54/Series 4. The extreme mountainous landscape may be compared with other compositions in this section (see Adam vol.54/Series 5/14) and the circular building is a version of those on the verso of Adam vol.54/Series 5/10. The verso of Adam vol.55/162 shows a similar gorge with tombs, and may have strayed from this volume and section. The mountain landscape with a road at its foot appears with a similar pass in Adam vol.54/Series 5/6. These two drawings may have been immediately inspired by the journey Robert Adam had made to Ancona, Italy in September 1755, when he passed through the Passo del Furlo and Vespasian's Tunnel (see Clerk Collection, Scotland, Clerk 137 and 139). It might equally have been inspired by the picturesque landscape Adam passed through on his return journey from Italy in 1757.

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.

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