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  • image Adam vol.57/141
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Reference number

Adam vol.57/141

Purpose

Capriccio of a large urn with figures in relief, surrounded by architectural fragments. To the right is a niche with figure flanked by giant columns on bases with relief panels.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 141

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 or 1756.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, penand grey wash, on brown washed paper; ink framing line253 x 280

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Unfinished pencil capriccio of column and capitals, similar in composition to the drawing on the recto.

Notes

This capriccio may be compared with that in Adam vol.57/139. The urn depicted is similar to the type of vase found in the Villa dei Medici in c.1780, although Robert Adam's source of inspiration here and in Adam vol.57/139 is probably Piranesi. (See Piranesi Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcophagi, 1778, particularly that shown as being from the Villa Albani.) Use of brown washed paper is also found in Adam vol.57/47 and 57/86.

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).