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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Italy: Baia: the Imperial Villa: ? 'Temple of Apollo'. View of a group of ruins in a flat landscape beside a lake, probably the 'Temple of Apollo' at Baia, with large rectangular windows and a series of tall towers on two levels. Vegetation is shown in the foreground to the right.
  • image Adam vol.57/26

Reference number

Adam vol.57/26

Purpose

Italy: Baia: the Imperial Villa: ? 'Temple of Apollo'. View of a group of ruins in a flat landscape beside a lake, probably the 'Temple of Apollo' at Baia, with large rectangular windows and a series of tall towers on two levels. Vegetation is shown in the foreground to the right.

Aspect

Perspectiveverso sketch of a grotesque panel

Inscribed

Inscribed in pencil in a contemporary hand Baia; in ink 26

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, brown, blue and grey washes186 x 340

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Sketch in black chalk for a grotesque panel.

Notes

This drawing depicts more ruins of the thermal complex at Baia, which are also depicted in Adam vol.57/17 and 57/30. The latter drawing, which is probably by Clérisseau, is taken from virtually the same viewpoint, albeit closer, as this drawing by Robert Adam. It is likely that the drawing depicts the 'Temple of Apollo' beside the Lago di Averno, and it can be compared to that of Giovanni Battista Natali (1698-1765) in Paoli, Avanzi Delle Antichita Esistenti a Pozzuoli Cuma e Baja, Naples, 1768, pl.XLIII. The sketch on the verso is unlikely to be related to Baia, and is simply an example of the sheet being re-used, as was the case with Adam vol.57/19.

Level

Drawing

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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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