Capriccio showing the interior of a large barrel-vaulted and coffered hall with three-bay screens alternating with niches leading to a hemicycle at the end. At floor level, a series of steps lead to a circular fountain and basin and sculptures of seated figures.

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Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam Volume 56

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Reference number

Adam vol.56/132

Purpose

Capriccio showing the interior of a large barrel-vaulted and coffered hall with three-bay screens alternating with niches leading to a hemicycle at the end. At floor level, a series of steps lead to a circular fountain and basin and sculptures of seated figures.

Aspect

Perspectiveverso Plan

Inscribed

Inscribed inink 95; in red ink 132.

Signed and dated

Undated, probably 1756 or 1757.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, brown and grey washes; ink framing line290 x 325, corners torn except in bottom right

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Unfinished pencil capriccio showing a plan.

Notes

A similar composition with steps descending to a basin is found in a pen sketch by Robert Adam in Adam vol.55/79. It can also be compared with a similar interior by Charles-Louis Clérisseau among those in The Hermitage, which is identified as a studio copy (see Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820) Dessins du musée de l'Ermitage Saint-Petersbourg, catalogue of an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1995, p.152, pl.67). Fleming dates this drawing 1756-57 (see Fleming op. cit. 1962, caption to pl.71).

Literature

Rep. Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (John Murray, London, 1962 repr.1978), pl.71

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009

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.

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