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Reference number

6r to 8r and 9r (SM volume 39) Note on the Colosseum, Rome

Purpose

6r to 8r and 9r (SM volume 39) Note on the Colosseum, Rome

Notes

Soane illustrated his Royal Academy lectures with a number of drawings of the Colosseum, commenting in Lecture IV that they 'will give but a faint idea of the Colosseum, a magnificent and mighty structure in its perfect state ... but how changed, how melancholy in its present wretched state, majestic, however, even in its venerable ruins.' (D.Watkin, Sir John Soane: the Royal Academy lectures, 2000, p.111; R.A. lecture drawings: SM 20/5/2-7, 23/2/1, 23/2/8, 23/4/5). See also: Drawings catalogue: Soane in Italy: Measured drawings: Rome: Colosseum, c. May-June 1778 (6)
Literature. P.du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.125-6

Level

Drawing

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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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