Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Italy: Baia: the Imperial Villa. View of two large vaulted spaces forming part of the thermal complex at Baia, one having a series of small niches, the other is a smaller space with overgrown ruins.
  • image Adam vol.57/43
Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image
Print this image in A4 view  (icon indicating printer link)

Reference number

Adam vol.57/43

Purpose

Italy: Baia: the Imperial Villa. View of two large vaulted spaces forming part of the thermal complex at Baia, one having a series of small niches, the other is a smaller space with overgrown ruins.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in pencil in a contemporary hand Baia; in ink 43

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, brown and grey washes; pencil framing line199 x 308

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

This is Robert Adam's version of a drawing on grey paper by Charles-Louis Clérisseau, see Adam vol.57/23. As usual, Adam's view is the more accurate but is less exciting than that of Clérisseau, and omits the 'Temple of Diana' that appears in the latter's more evocative composition. The Adam drawing has been given pencil framing lines, similar to those found in Adam vol.57/17 and others. Like the Clérisseau drawing, it may be compared with the view by Giovanni Battista Natali in Paoli, Avanzi Delle Antichita Esistenti a Pozzuoli Cuma e Baja, Naples, 1768, pl.LV, in which the cave-like structure is called known as 'Truglio'.

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).