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  • image Image 1 for SM (4) 10/1/34 (5) 10/1/35
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  • image Image 1 for SM (4) 10/1/34 (5) 10/1/35
  • image Image 2 for SM (4) 10/1/34 (5) 10/1/35

Reference number

SM (4) 10/1/34 (5) 10/1/35

Purpose

Presentation drawings showing variant designs for a rusticated wall with figurative statues over the gateway, one dated 29 October 1795 (2)

Aspect

4 Elevation, wall plan and (pencil) part-plan of the attic showing wall with narrow banded rustication, terminal pavilions of raised Corinthian blind 'porticos' in antis and a central gatehouse. The gatehouse has a bucrania and festoon frieze over a semicircular-headed entrance flanked on either side by Corinthian blind 'porticos' in antis raised on pedestals adjacent to fluted pilasters capped by antefixes 5 Elevation showing design similar to drawing 4, except with fluted columns at the corners, no decoration on the frieze or the pedestals (except for panelling on the eastern half), a lion motif over the attic at the north-west corner, no ornamentation on the base or frieze, taller statues and with roundels beneath the statues.

Scale

(4-5) bar scale

Inscribed

4 some dimensions given and (Bailey) A Design for the North Front of the Bank of England, made in the year 1795 5 some dimensions given, feint pencil inscriptions, (Bailey) Elevation of a Design for the North Front of the Bank of England (verso) in pencil Elevation / of the Wall / next Lothbury

Signed and dated

  • (4) J. Soane Oct. 29. 1795

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Notes

The direct influence of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli is shown in the screen wall's rounded corners, unique capitals and intercolumniation. The rounded corners and unified wall suggest a wrapping enclosure. The design denotes security and enclosure while avoiding the heavy fortified manner of Soane's preliminary designs (see drawings 1 and 2). For more about Soane and the Temple of Vesta, see M. Richardson, 'John Soane and the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XLVI, 2003, pp. 127-46.

Drawing 5 was engraved by John Sewell and published in European Magazine in May 1797.

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).