Royal Academy exhibition drawing by J. M. Gandy, 1798 (2)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1352)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (430)
      - Rotunda, 1794-95 (30)

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Reference number

SM (29) P127 (30) volume 12/11

Purpose

Royal Academy exhibition drawing by J. M. Gandy, 1798 (2)

Aspect

29 Imaginary view of the Rotunda and the Four Per Cent Office in ruins 30 Study for drawing 29

Signed and dated

(29-30) 1798

Hand

(29-30) Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843)

Notes

Drawing 29 was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1832 under the title 'Architectural Ruins: a vision'. It shows the Rotunda in an imaginary future, as a reminder of a past civilization just as the Roman ruins served Soane's contemporaries. The drawing's approach is similar to the imaginary views drawn by other architects, such as Robert Adam, and the etchings of past artists, such as Piranesi. The imaginary view placed Soane's Rotunda among the revered ruins of antiquity.

Literature: M. Richardson & M. Stevens (eds), John Soane architect: master of space and light, Royal Academy of Arts, 1999, p. 231, cat. 133; C. Woodward, In Ruins, 2001, pp. 160-165; J. Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1978, pp.115, plates 70 and 74)

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).