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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Italy: Rome, the Vatican. Unfinished record drawing of the decoration of a pilaster with four relief panels of different shapes, below which are four paired scenes framed by leafy arches, each containing putti in landscape or architectural settings; at the base are two putti on a geometric pedestal holding a garland.
  • image Adam vol.26/194
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Reference number

Adam vol.26/194

Purpose

Italy: Rome, the Vatican. Unfinished record drawing of the decoration of a pilaster with four relief panels of different shapes, below which are four paired scenes framed by leafy arches, each containing putti in landscape or architectural settings; at the base are two putti on a geometric pedestal holding a garland.

Aspect

Elevation

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1760 - 1763

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, watercolour 1232 x 270, three joined sheets

Hand

Giuseppe Manocchi (attributed to)

Notes

This drawing, together with those in Adam vol.26/186, 191-201 is part of a group attributed to Giuseppe Manocchi (c.1731-82), showing decoration of the Vatican logge. This drawing is a version of the Ottaviani engraving (see below) for pilaster 8; although the subject matter of the relief panels does not correspond, the lower portion does, as does the overall composition. According to Dacros, the panels should show: galloping horse, Polimnia, fighting centaurs, satyr with horn (see N. Dacros, Le Logge di Raffaello, Rome, 1986, pp.271-2). The composition also lacks a side border of foliage and rosettes; there is a more accurate version of this pilaster in Adam vol.26/200 a & b that shows the border. There is a variant of this drawing in Sir John Soane's Museum, Soane volume SM130/3.
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

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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.

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