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  • image Adam vol.26/151

Reference number

Adam vol.26/151

Purpose

Record drawing of part of a panel showing a young nude male beside part of an acanthus, who is holding branches of foliage that unwind as two scrolls.

Aspect

Elevation

Signed and dated

  • Undated

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, grey wash, pencil framing line 238 x 521

Hand

Unidentified eighteenth-century artist

Notes

The style of decoration here is that of the pilasters of the Vatican logge in Rome, and the figure may be compared with the larger-scale figures found in Adam vol.26/191, attributed to Giuseppe Manocchi (c.1731-82). However, the accomplished though rather wooden draughtsmanship is atypical of either Manocchi or Antonio Zucchi (1726-95), and may be that of Giuseppe Sacco (1735-98), who joined James Adam in Verona in 1760 and was with him in Rome (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.373).
The decoration of the Vatican logge appeared as engravings between 1772 - 1777 in three parts: Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1772), Seconda Parte delle Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1776) and Terza ed Ultima Parte delle Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1777). Work on the project of recording was begun in 1760 and was more or less completed by 1768. The principal artists involved were the painter Gaetano Savorelli (d.1791) and the architect Pietro Camporesi (1726-81), and the engraver was Giovanni Ottaviani (1735-1808). The third volume was engraved by Giovanni Volpato (1733-1803), after drawings by Ludovico Tesio (1731-82).

Level

Drawing

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).