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  • image Image 1 for SM 45/1/2
  • image Image 2 for SM 45/1/2
  • image Image 1 for SM 45/1/2
  • image Image 2 for SM 45/1/2

Reference number

SM 45/1/2

Purpose

Preliminary measured drawing

Aspect

Rough half-plan of the circular chapel, ceiling plan, wall elevation, half-section with reference to Bernini's statues of Saints Jerome and Mary Magdalene, St Gesolima / Magdalena / behind the Gt Altar Lapis Lazuli / Ceiling Lapis Blue Gold Stars / [James] Gibbs seems to have studied here; part elevation of a panel framed by rich ornament
(verso) Rough section through room with a segmental ceiling and rough detail of Composite capital in the Church of San Agostino, Siena

Inscribed

as above and Try a flat ceiling with Square Compartments / La Sapienza Chiesa / [altarpiece painted by] Carlo Marata and some dimensions given
(verso, in another hand) Sigre Soan and (Soane) Sienna / St Agostino / the Corinthian order by Vanvitelli

Signed and dated

  • Sienna Saturday April 22 1780

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on secretary paper with three fold marks (220 x 310)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

three monti and eight-pointed star, and LB (Hayward 2610-16, Italian) The star and monti are the heraldic device of the Chigi so this may be a Siennese watermark (noted by Professor du Prey, January 2009)

Notes

These scribbled drawings made in situ on a well worn scrap of paper were doubtless intended as the basis for a more finished drawing that was never made.

The Chigi Chapel (Capella della Madonna del Voto) was built to the design of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) for Pope Alexander VII Chigi, 1661-3. (H.Hibbard, Bernini, 1965, p. 191)

Literature

P.du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.292-5 (a detailed description of drawing and building)

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.

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