Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Red chalk
391 x 514
Hand
Nicolas-François-David Lhuiller (attributed to)
Watermark
fleur de lys in double circle
Notes
This drawing is a variation on the frieze of the Temple of the Sun, which was in the Colonna gardens, Rome, in the eighteenth century. There is a probable detail of the base of the putto in Adam vol.26/52, which is inscribed 'Colonna Garden - fragment of the Temple of the Sun / Rome'. The drawing overlays an original sheet of sketch details. There is a large group of black and red chalk drawings in this volume attributed to Nicolas-François-David Lhuiller (d.1793), showing the same clarity of outline and background vertical strokes. Little is known of Lhuiller, who was a Roman protégé of Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820). He was described as 'dans le même temps que Clérisseau formait un sculpteur d'ornements, qui devint aussi très habile, L'huiller, ce professeur dirigea ses études à Rome sur les plus beaux ornements, lui en développa les principes dont il avait fait une étude particulière, et lui procura des travaux considérables pour divers anglais avec lesquels il était en correspondance' (see Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820) Dessins du musée de l'Ermitage Saint-Petersbourg, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1995, p.23).
Level
Drawing
Exhibition history
'Bob the Roman': Heroic Antiquity and the Architecture of Robert Adam, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 27 June - 27 September 2003; New York School of Interior Design Gallery, 29 September - 4 December 2004
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,
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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