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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Italy: ? near Pozzuoli. View of two ruined mausolea, probably in the vicinity of Pozzuoli, one in the form of a cube surmounted by a cylinder, the other a cube surmounted by an altar on a stepped base. In the foreground are some ruins and in the distance some domestic buildings.
  • image Adam vol.57/1

Reference number

Adam vol.57/1

Purpose

Italy: ? near Pozzuoli. View of two ruined mausolea, probably in the vicinity of Pozzuoli, one in the form of a cube surmounted by a cylinder, the other a cube surmounted by an altar on a stepped base. In the foreground are some ruins and in the distance some domestic buildings.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in pencil in a contemporary hand Lago; in ink 1

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, grey and brown washes230 x 264

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

This drawing was probably made in the vicinity of Pozzuoli where there were numerous tombs beside the roads, of which those on the Via Capania were the best preserved and those on the Via Celle the most outstanding. There are two engravings of those at San Vito in Paoli's Avanzi Delle Antichita Esistenti a Pozzuoli Cuma e Baja, Naples, 1768, pls.XXXV and XXXVI, which are of a similar cube surmounted by cylinder form. Adam vol.57/18 shows the Carceri Vecchie on the Via Appia at Capua, and there are other drawings of mausolea in Adam vol.57/7 and vol.57/11. There were also two ancient tombs at San Benedetto dei Marsi near the Lago Fucino, which Robert Adam may have seen on his return journey via Cassino.

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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