Approved design for the Scala Regia, February 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 71/2/72

Purpose

Approved design for the Scala Regia, February 1822

Aspect

Interior perspective of the Scala Regia

Inscribed

as above, Submitted to His Majesty / by Col Stephenson & ap- / proved

Signed and dated

February 1822
John Soane Arch L.I.F. / Feb 1822

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, yellow, sepia, pink and blue washes, shaded, with multi-ruled caput and black wash border on wove paper (451 x 336)

Hand

Soane Office

Notes

Although more elaborately ornamented than in SM 71/2/71, with rosettes, Vitruvian scroll mouldings and angels with trumpets, the Scala Regia is much less elaborate than the ceremonial staircase designed by Soane in 1794-6 (q.v. London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: official (mostly domeless) designs: drawings 102-3). However, this was the design approved by the King, according to a note on the drawing in Soane's hand. The Scala Regia was an important part of Soane's 1794-6 designs that was resurrected in the 1820s scheme. It formed one part of a grand processional route into the heart of Westminster, immediately preceded by a gothic Royal Entrance and leading on to a 'national monument' consisting of three Royal Galleries. Soane's Royal Staircase was executed in 1822-3 to a different design (see SM volume 61/29-30).

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).