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  • image SM Adam volume 21/174

Reference number

SM Adam volume 21/174

Purpose

[3] Alternative preliminary designs for a free-standing funerary monument, 1778, unexecuted

Aspect

Alternative rough elevations for a free-standing funerary monument. The left-hand design shows a tripartite pedestal, supported by a stylobate, containing an inscription panel, flanked by rectangular relief(?) panels, and surmounted by acroteria flanking a fluted sarcophagus, containing a tablet (ornamented with a coat of arms?), and supporting a bust. The right-hand design shows a pediment, supported by a stylobate, and containing a (rectangular or circular) inscription panel, and flanked by paired volutes, supporting a fluted sarcophagus, with a tablet containing a mitre, crozier and inverted torch, and supporting a bust on a socle, flanked by Corinthian(?) columns/pilasters, supporting a broken-base pediment, underneath which is a roundel containing a coat of arms, and the whole is set against a pyramid in relief

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

Dr Johnson Bp / of Worcester

Signed and dated

  • 1778
    datable to 1778

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (363 x 301)

Hand

Robert Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 31
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 267
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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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