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Notes
The architectural and stylistic provenance for the various elements of the elevation were discussed at length by Sir John Summerson in his article, ‘The Society’s house: an architectural study’, in 1954.
The engraving of the principal front has been cropped out of a copy of The works in architecture of Robert and James Adam, and has been trimmed and folded to fit into the Adam folios at the Soane Museum.
In 1994 the principal RSA building at number 18 (later number 8) John Street received three figurative roofline sculptures of Manufactures and Commerce, Ceres and Minerva. These sculptures are shown in Adam’s elevation, but in the 1770s there had not been enough money to execute them, so a former vice-president of the RSA, Sebastian de Farranti provided the money two centuries later.
Level
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 Preliminary design, design, finished drawings and an engraving showing plans and elevations for the building, 1771-72, as executed (5)
- [140] The engraving of the principal front is cropped out of 'The Works', and has been heavily trimmed, and them folded to fit into the Adam folios, from 1771, as executed
- [141] Design for the building, 1771-72, as executed
- [142] Finished drawing for the building, 1771-72, as executed
- [143] Preliminary design for the principal front, 1771-72, as executed
- [144] Engraving of the principal front, 1771-72, as executed