Study of a square decorated frieze with acanthus leaves and dentils, with an egg-and-dart cornice, of a pilaster at the base of the impost of an arch.

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Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam Volume 57

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Reference number

Adam vol.57/142

Purpose

Study of a square decorated frieze with acanthus leaves and dentils, with an egg-and-dart cornice, of a pilaster at the base of the impost of an arch.

Aspect

Detail

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 142

Signed and dated

Undated

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and pen 172 x 226

Hand

Unidentified eighteenth-century artist

Notes

The style of drawing of this classical detail suggests that it was probably copied from a Renaissance source similar to that of the Codex Corner, which James Adam acquired along with the Albani drawings in 1762 (see T. Ashby, 'Sixteenth-Century Drawings of Roman Buildings', Papers of the British School in Rome, 1904, p.1 and fig.110). The hand may be that of a draughtsman working for the Adam brothers, copying from an unidentified source the Albani collection.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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