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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Unfinished academic studies for the plan and courtyard elevation of a public building. The plan shows the building set around a court with quadrant corners, entered through a concave portico flanked by octagonal rooms, leading to two large symmetrical pavilions with porticoes facing across the court. The elevation shows a pedimented portico of three bays between pilasters; on either side is a door flanked by sculpture niches with thermal windows above.
  • image Adam vol.9/41
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Reference number

Adam vol.9/41

Purpose

Unfinished academic studies for the plan and courtyard elevation of a public building. The plan shows the building set around a court with quadrant corners, entered through a concave portico flanked by octagonal rooms, leading to two large symmetrical pavilions with porticoes facing across the court. The elevation shows a pedimented portico of three bays between pilasters; on either side is a door flanked by sculpture niches with thermal windows above.

Aspect

Plan, elevationverso part of diagram

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 41verso: Inscribed with eight lines in red chalk in a contemporary hand, beside columns of accounts in scudi in ink: Mr Hervey is infinitely obliged to -/ for his Breakfast, it would however / - deal better, if he had had / sure of the Srora Madre's Company / - it was not so that and - / the most obedient & humble / of Mr Adams who - / disobedient haughty :

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756

Medium and dimensions

Pen264 x 168

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Part of a diagram in red chalk. Christopher Hervey was at Tivoli in April 1756 with Robert Adam and Charles-Louis Clérisseau, who were there 'to view Hadrian's Villa, make drawings and inspect some people I have working there, as I am making an exact plan of it' (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.204; for information about Hervey see J. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800, New Haven and London, 1997, p.489, and Fleming op.cit. p.359).

Notes

The plan appears to be a variation on the scheme shown in Adam vol.9/31. The top pavilion with spiral staircases on either side of a circular hall relates this drawing to Robert Adam's modest exercises in pavilions in Adam vol.9/11, although the scale suggests its inspiration was imperial buildings. The elevation is probably for one of the three courtyard façades, although it matches none closely.

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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