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Adam volume 54, Series 4 and 5
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Purpose
Adam volume 54, Series 4 and 5
Signed and dated
- 1757
Main Year
Notes
This volume is unlike most of the other Adam volumes in its binding of mottled calf; it also has a contemporary label, 'Diuer. Dessi', presumably a version of diversi designi. The paper on which the drawings are mounted has a watermark frequently found in the Italian volumes of the Adam collection: a fleur de lys within a circle. The drawings themselves have a variety of watermarks. The description of the contents is on a separate sheet fixed to the inside cover and is in ink in a later eighteenth-century hand. The contents correspond to the six sections into which the volume is divided; a seventh section of rough sketches has been added, probably in the slightly later hand of George Bailey and possibly to fill the blank pages of the volume. At that time, presumably in the late 1830s, Bailey also noted the drawings that were missing from the original sections.Series 4: there were 15 drawings in the section entitled Gothic Sketches.Series 5: there were originally 20 drawings in the small section described as Landskip Sketches in the index to the volume, of which only 12 remain.
Level
Group
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).
Contents of Adam volume 54, Series 4 and 5
- Design showing an altarpiece with large consoles joined by a swag with a relief panel above and part of a capriccio of landscape and buildings flanked by two standing figures.
- Design for a Gothic tower, consisting of a circular, central tower with battlements and turrets, enclosed in a wider square tower with round corner towers and battlements with windows and tracery doorways. It is approached by steps.
- Capriccio showing the façade of a church with three spires on top of heavily decorated towers, with a central rose window above an arcade with apsidal doorway.
- Italy: Florence, Florence Cathedral and Uffizi: detail of elevation and section of balustrading in four tiers from the cathedral; cornice detail from the Uffizi.
- This possibly unfinished design showing a battlemented tower with which be circular in plan flankled by two smaller attached and battlemented corner towers with lancet windows. A central entrance door is in a recessed arch, with window in niche above.
- Unfinished gothic capriccio showing an ecclesiastical three-storey building with statues in niches on either side of the entrance, above which is a tri-partite window with rose and quatrefoils above. An arcade of three bays is adjoins the entrance facade.
- Unfinished capriccio showing the rich Gothic façade of a religious building composed with diminishing towers decorated with fretwork and crocketing. It is supported by flying buttresses with an asymmetrical tower at one end linked by a high Gothic arcade.
- Capricci showing three symmetrical Gothic elevations, the more complete with a three-storey tower with crocketing and lancet windows. Below on the sheet is a plan with a seven-bay portico opening into a hall with circular colonnade.
- Capriccio showing a plan and two elevations of a three-storey arcaded, circular tower with belvedere and Gothic portico of five bays on steps. The smaller elevation has a dome and Gothic cupola. Adjacent to this is a circular plan with four projecting square towers with columns between each of them.
- Capriccio showing a Gothic tower composed of four stories with a central tower with arcaded and battlemented top, lancet windows and quatrefoils. It has a round-headed entrance. Two crotcheded spires have been crossed out and an attempt haseen made to erase them.
- Capricci showing three elevations, two of which are unfinished. The largest shows the tower and entrance façade of a Gothic church with a wing to one side with a short spire. Beside this is an elevation of a classical building with three-bay centre of the Giant Order, shallow dome and linked pavilions. Below is an elevation of a domed building with several pediments and three-bay entrance with thermal window above.
- Capricci showing three plans and an elevation. The elevation is that of a Gothic five-bay façade with campanile towers and tiled roof. The adjacent plan corresponds with this elevation. Above are two other plans, one for a triangular corner pavilion of five bays with bowed elevation, and the other with a circular central room with two columns.
- This drawing is missing
- Capricci showing four elevations, one of which is unfinished and has a three-bay centrepiece with a three-bay wing to one side. Above and below are three alternative elevations for a pavilion with a three-bay centre niche on steps with coffering and flanking single bays.
- Capriccio showing a Gothic pavilion of thirteen bays with a three-bay arcaded entrance with short crocketed spire and battlements, and small single-bay pavilions at each end with finials.
- Capriccio showing a shallow domed, circular building with outbuildings, including an obelisk on top of a small tower at the head of steps. This is set in a landscape with trees and rocks in the foreground.
- Capriccio showing a landscape with a bent tree in the foreground beside a sarcophagus. In the background are domed buildings with porticoes beside a four-arched causeway. In the foreground are architectural fragments.
- This drawing is missing
- This drawing is missing
- Possibly unfinished view of a group of classical ruins showing the remains of vaulting on top of overgrown buildings.
- Possibly unfinished capriccio showing a square sarcophagus supported by four garlanded herms. Beyond is a curving road with columned tombs set in a hillside with mountains beyond
- missing drawing
- Unfinished capriccio showing a landscape with an irregular castle approached by a bridge in the distance. Below is a watermill and buildings. In the foreground is a small wooden footbridge over a stream.
- missing drawing
- Possibly unfinished capriccio showing an irregular building of several stories with tower, colonnades, battlements and an external rustic staircase. It is in a wooded and hilly setting and is approached over a bridge. In the foreground centre are rocks and vegetation.
- Unfinished capriccio showing a lake with island, boat and several bathers, with a watermill to one side. Beyond is a small castello with towers approached over a bridge. In the foreground are rocks and vegetation.
- missing drawing
- missing drawing
- Capriccio showing a mountainous and wooded landscape with a road passing over an alpine bridge between gorges. A towered and ruinous castle is on rocks above a ravine, with a waterfall at its foot.
- Capriccio showing a landscape with hilltop tower and trees overlooking a valley with another, possibly towered, building and a group of deciduous trees.
- missing drawing
- Capriccio showing a series of ruined arches converted at one end to a square battlemented tower with flag, set in a landscape. In the foreground are small figures and the remains of a tree.
- Capriccio showing a gorge or pass cut through mountains, beside which is a sarcophagus; above is a large Gothic cathedral-like structure with pyramid-topped towers and battlements. This is just below a circular domed structure with columns and vaulting, with another building in the distance.
- Unfinished study of an irregular and partially ruined castle with bastions and battlemented towers beside a river with a town in the distance.
- missing drawing
- Scotland: Midlothian, Roslin Castle. View showing castle and chapel in a wooded river valley. In the foreground is an irregular castellated building with towers approached by a causeway, beside which are cottages. Below this is an unfinished sketch of a church supported by buttresses.
- Design for a segmental pedimented window showing in perspective five unfinished alternatives of the windowhead and pediment, two showing lion masks at the base of the console. Below are two more compositions with scale decoration and a detail of a plain console.
- London: Parliament House (designs for). Unfinished drawing showing the badge of the Order of the Thistle.