Academic study showing a plan of a symmetrical building with an apsidal centre, a five-bay screen and horseshoe ramp, and two spiral staircases. At the end of the hall is another staircase, two halls with apsidal ends, more staircases and columns.

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Academic study showing a plan of a symmetrical building with an apsidal centre, a five-bay screen and horseshoe ramp, and two spiral staircases. At the end of the hall is another staircase, two halls with apsidal ends, more staircases and columns.

Browse

Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam Volume 55

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

Adam vol. 55/125

Purpose

Academic study showing a plan of a symmetrical building with an apsidal centre, a five-bay screen and horseshoe ramp, and two spiral staircases. At the end of the hall is another staircase, two halls with apsidal ends, more staircases and columns.

Aspect

Plan

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 125

Signed and dated

Undated, probably 1755 - 1756

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen148 x 203

Hand

Robert Adam

Watermark

Grapes, trimmed

Notes

This sheet appears to show Robert Adam turning a pencil sketch into a developed ink scheme, possibly incorporating suggestions or corrections by Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1731-1812). The plan is firmly rooted in Renaissance examples such as the Villa Giulia or the Villa Belvedere of the Vatican in Rome, Italy, both of which Adam knew well. A possible elevation to this plan may be seen in Adam vol.55/141 and the drawing may be compared with the more developed ink scheme for a music pavilion in Adam vol.55/173 verso. There are similar plans in volume 9 (see particularly Adam vol.9/154 recto and verso).

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).