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  • image Adam vol.56/79

Reference number

Adam vol.56/79

Purpose

Capriccio showing a ruined arch with two bays of a Corinthian portico to one side. Below the arch are two figures, one mounted on horseback.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on backing sheet 30; in red ink 79

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756 or 1757.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey wash 120 x 96; laid/mounted onto backing sheet size 132 x 112

Hand

Robert Adam (attributed to)

Notes

According to Fleming, this drawing is attributable to Robert Adam, executed 'in the manner of Pannini', and is dated 1756-7 (see Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), caption to pl.69). Giovanni Paolo Pannini, who died in 1765, was professeur de perspective at the French Academy in Rome, where he taught Charles-Louis Clérisseau in 1752-53 (see Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820) Dessins du musée de l'Ermitage Saint-Petersbourg catalogue of exhibition held at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1995, pp.16-7). Neither this drawing, nor its companion in Adam vol.56/67, described as being in the style of Pannini - match any small-scale Pannini drawings. The drawings by Pannini that Robert Adam possessed were considerably larger than any of the drawings in Adam volume 56 (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam 2 vols. (London, 1922), vol.II, pp.326-7).Both this drawing and that in Adam vol.56/67 are numbered in ink on part of the original mounting sheets, as part of an Adam-Clérisseau set. There is a copy of this drawing by C J Richardson (1806-1871) in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (P&D 93.G.8/43).

Literature

Rep. Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), pl.69

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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