Scale
Scale bar of 2 ins to 10 ft.
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink ELEVATION of the CROSS at WINCHESTER; on both album leaf and drawing in red ink 36
Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Pencil and pen; grey wash; ink framing line409 x 276
Hand
Robert Adam
Notes
Robert Adam was in London in 1749/50 and visited Wilton in 1750 (see Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), p.85). He presumably saw the early fifteenth-century Butter Cross (High Cross) at Winchester at that time. However, this drawing is probably a copy of a print of 1741, without the central sculpture, rather than a worked-up sketch made at first hand (see Victoria County History, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, 5 vols (London, 1912), vol.V, p.6). In the Adam sale of 1818 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam Christie's, London, 21 & 22 May 1818), lot 2 was a collection of prints of Gothic architecture, 'A ditto (large parcel) of Gothic architecture and antiquities' (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 2 vols.(London, 1922), vol.II, p.329-333); this may well have included a print such as the one of the Butter Cross.There is a disparity between the scale bar and the scale of the drawing.
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural,
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