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  • image Adam vol.25/190
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Reference number

Adam vol.25/190

Purpose

Design for decorative panel of ornament in the antique style, showing three sphinxes supporting a table top with a large floral vase, flanked by two urns of different design

Aspect

Elevation

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink in Robert Adam's hand Vaso anticha scoperta nel anno 1757 (bottom) Frammento cavato d'un Terra Cotta anticho (top)

Signed and dated

  • 1757

Medium and dimensions

Black chalk, pen185 x 199

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

In the opinion of A. A. Tait, this drawing relates in time and place or subject to those contained in Adam volume 55.The inscriptions in Robert Adam's hand indicate that the drawing was made before his departure from Rome in May 1757. The sheet is amongst a group of designs for silver (see Adam vol.25/167-189), and several of these may also belong to this period (see M. Snodin, 'Putting Adam into Context', Silver & Jewellery, Birmingham, 1995, p.16). The composition may be compared with a design for an epergne in Adam vol.6/100 and an ink sketch in Adam vol.6/90 dated 1744 for a bath in the antique style. Snodin suggests that a drawing for a tureen in Adam vol.9/88 belongs to 'perhaps late 1750s'.

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).