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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Capriccio showing an elevation of a pavilion with a stepped shallow dome above a pediment of sculpture on a three-bay portico in antis, which is on top of steps flanked by pilasters beside aedicular doorways. On either side are wings with relief sculpture and statues on the roofline. A flap of paper is used to show an alternative version, a pilastered drum.
  • image Adam vol.55/6

Reference number

Adam vol.55/6

Purpose

Capriccio showing an elevation of a pavilion with a stepped shallow dome above a pediment of sculpture on a three-bay portico in antis, which is on top of steps flanked by pilasters beside aedicular doorways. On either side are wings with relief sculpture and statues on the roofline. A flap of paper is used to show an alternative version, a pilastered drum.

Aspect

Elevation

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 6

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Pen, brown wash161 x 246

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

The domed pavilion is similar to several shown in Adam volume 9, such as an unfinished plan and elevation in Adam vol.9/33; the missing drawing in Adam vol.55/33 (see A. Rowan, Catalogues of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Robert Adam, London, 1988, p.34); and a similar composition in Adam vol.55/88. All may have been architectural exercises derived from the drawing by Laurent-Benoít Dewez for a domed pavilion (see S. Ansiaux, 'Les dessins d'Italie de Laurent-Benoít Dewez', Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome, xxvii, 1952, pp.1-15, fig.6). The alternative forms for the dome reinforce the academic nature of the drawing and the seriousness of Robert Adam's academic studies.

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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