Design for the Scala Regia, 1822

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Palace of Westminster: designs for alterations and additions, 1793-1828 (499)
    - London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: alterations and additions, 1817-28 (220)
      - Royal Entrance and Scala Regia, 1822-23 (68)
        Designs for a new Royal Entrance and Scala Regia, February-July 1822

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Reference number

SM 71/2/71

Purpose

Design for the Scala Regia, 1822

Aspect

View of a Design for the Scala Regia, House of Lords

Inscribed

as above

Signed and dated

1822
1822

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, yellow and sepia washes, shaded, with multi-ruled caput wash border on wove paper (425 x 292)

Hand

Soane Office

Watermark

J Whatman 1820

Notes

This early design for the Scala Regia corresponds to a plan dated 'February 1822' (SM 71/2/82) so that the staircase occupies the space between an existing vestibule and the Prince's Chamber. The ornamentation of the staircase in this instance is fairly restrained, certainly in comparison with the approved design (SM 71/2/72). The design also differs from Soane's earlier designs for a Scala Regia made 1794-6 as part of his anticipated rebuilding of the House of Lords (q.v. London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: official (mostly domeless) designs: drawings 102-3). Features common to both the old and new designs include statues of monarchs, niches and the use of the Corinthian order, but the new design is much smaller in scale, having two flights of stairs instead of three and is less elaborately ornamented than the earlier version. The Scala Regia was executed to a different design in 1822-3.

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.

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).