Capriccio of two large columns on a wall, below which is a large urn on a pedestal decorated with a relief of figures. To the left is a smaller statue with raised arm on a circular base. In the background is a screen divided by memorial niches.

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Capriccio of two large columns on a wall, below which is a large urn on a pedestal decorated with a relief of figures. To the left is a smaller statue with raised arm on a circular base. In the background is a screen divided by memorial niches.

Browse

Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam Volume 57

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

Adam vol.57/139

Purpose

Capriccio of two large columns on a wall, below which is a large urn on a pedestal decorated with a relief of figures. To the left is a smaller statue with raised arm on a circular base. In the background is a screen divided by memorial niches.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 139

Signed and dated

Undated, probably 1755 or 1756.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, grey washes 216 x 287

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

Elements within this composition can be found in Adam vol.57/128 and 57/141. The large urn could well have been inspired by G. B. Piranesi, Le Antichità Romane, 1756, which included several funeral urns from around the Via Appia,. More were to appear later in his Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcophagi, etc., Rome, 1778. There is also a group of drawings of urns by Giuseppe Manocchi (c.1731-82) in Adam vol.19/90-97.

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).