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  • image Adam vol.56/153
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/153

Purpose

View of the Casino dell'Aurora at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome seen from the gardens, with a cart beside a small rustic cottage; in the foreground are two figures.

Aspect

Perspectiveverso diagram

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on right border of mount 17; in red ink 153.

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, black chalk, grey washes, oxidised lead white highlighting; ink framing line, beyond which is blue painted border259 x 382

Hand

Jean-Baptiste Lallemand

Verso

Chalk diagram

Watermark

fleur de lys in circle

Notes

This drawing is one of a set of six Roman views (Adam vol.56/149-154) by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (1716-1803), all of which have contemporaneous painted borders and have central folds, and most of which are signed. There were several similar sets in the Adam sales of 1818 and 1821 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam, Christie's, London, 21 & 22 May 1818 and Christie's London Catalogue of the Effects of Robert Adam Esq. Dec. 9 July 1821 & following days). Lot 32 of the second day sale of 1818 was described as 'Six elegant drawings in India ink by L'Alma, of Italian Garden scenery', and lot 29 contained several of Lallemand's landscapes, all of which were bought by John Soane (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 2 vols. (London, 1922), II, p.331). The set was probably made in 1756 for Robert Adam, at the time when he described himself as '... applying myself to these kind of sketches and have already made out a dozen of different views as unlike one another as I could ...' (Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), p.363). As is evident from the Adam sales, Lallemand made several views of villas and their gardens, which Robert Adam owned (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 2 vols. (London, 1922), vol.II, pp.331, 335). A drawing in the garden of the same villa is found in Adam vol.56/150.

Literature

Rep. Tait Robert Adam: drawings and imagination (Cambridge, 1993), p.21, fig.16

Level

Drawing

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).