Scale
(of elevation, bar scale) 1/5 in to 1ft
Inscribed
(pencil, verso) Sir Willm Molesworth (1758-98, of Pencarrow, Cornwall, in Italy 1777-9 see J.Ingamells, Dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy, 1701-1800, 1997) / alle Crocelle (an inn in Naples)
Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, burnt umber wash, shaded, partly pricked for transfer on laid paper (519 x 393)
Watermark
Scrolly ornate cartouche with M below (probably Italian)
Notes
Roughly drawn and unresolved, Soane's design consists of a domed, open, Corinthian rotunda (12 feet wide and housing a sculpted figure) over a square (on plan) middle storey with arched opening on a base with a stepped plinth (30 feet wide). The three-stage edifice is 60 feet high. A rough plan and erasures on the elevation suggest that Soane's original idea of an arched opening containing a sarcophagus was here altered to a blind opening with a bust placed in front of it. The source of the design lies in the Roman monument of the Julii at Saint-Remy in Provence. Soane's variations include the use of a Doric order instead of a Corinthian order for the middle storey and a rusticated base rather than the richly carved one of the original.
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,
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).
