Presentation drawings of capitals made for the Select Committee inquiry into the Office of Works and Public Buildings, 1828 (2)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, Whitehall & Downing Street: designs for new offices and scheme for the improvement of Downing Street, 1823-33 (284)
    - Designs for the new government buildings on Whitehall and the completion of Downing Street with a Triumphal Arch, December 1825-May 1833 (100)

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Reference number

SM (269) 49/3/32 (270) 49/3/33

Purpose

Presentation drawings of capitals made for the Select Committee inquiry into the Office of Works and Public Buildings, 1828 (2)

Aspect

269 Three comparative elevations of columns 270 Details of two Corinthian capitals

Scale

(269) bar scale of 1/6 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

269 Order of the Three Columns in the Campo Vaccino, Height of / The Order of the 3 Columns / as executed at the / Board of Trade & / Council Office, Order from the Temple at Tivoli / as intended to have been used at the Board of Trade

Medium and dimensions

(269, 270) Pen and sepia wash on wove paper (500 x 495, 496 x 726)

Hand

(269, 270) George Bailey (1792-1860, pupil then assistant 1806-37, curator 1837-60)

Watermark

(269) J Whatman Turkey Mill (cut off)

Notes

The issue of the order of the capitals was raised at the Select Committee's Inquiry in 1828. Giving evidence, Soane related that 'the order originally selected by me was taken from the Temple at Tivoli; my object was to have it a facsimile, not only in proportion, but in the exact dimensions both as to the columns and entablature... instead of that order, which is the lightest and least decorated example we have of the Corinthian order, it is changed for the order of three columns in the Campo Vaccino, the most massive and richly ornamented of all the remains of antiquity' (1828 Report). The difference between the orders is shown in drawings 269 and 270.

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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