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  • image Adam vol.9/33

Reference number

Adam vol.9/33

Purpose

Academic study for the plan and elevation of a shallow domed pavilion with a three-bay projecting portico and steps, opening onto a circular hall with columns and two oval staircases; the pavilion enclosed in a hemicycle of columns. The pavilion is linked by curved quadrants to two smaller pavilions with pediments and relief sculpture, joined by a four-deep screen of columns and piers with niches.

Aspect

Plan and elevationverso plan

Inscribed

verso Inscribed in ink 33

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 1756.

Medium and dimensions

Pen313 x 406, vertical foldline

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Unfinished academic study in pen and pencil for the plan for a public building with central court and large apse at one end, opening to a five-bay loggia of columns with double staircases on either side. This plan clearly shows the development of this scheme from pencil to pen and cross-hatching technique.

Watermark

names

Notes

The plan and elevation are a larger version of the sketch in Adam vol.9/5, which is attributed to Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1731-1812); the apse or hemicycle of columns appears in this drawing in the corrected form shown in 9/5. Both elevation and plan are exercises in composition based on the traditional Palladian villa; there are similar compositions in Adam vol.55/9, 34 and 52. The elevation may be compared with that at Adam vol.55/88.

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.

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