Among the drawings that Dance brought back from his several years abroad are 13 record drawings of buildings in Padua, Rome and Vicenza that probably came from the same source. All have a double ruled border (one thick and one thin line), measure 470 by 360 or 495 by 380 millimetres, are on the same kind of stout laid paper (except for [SM 44/8/2]) - two watermarked with an encircled fleur-de-lis and most have the same inscribing hand relating to Palmi Romani and Piedi Inglesi that is found also on a section of the Baths of Carcalla ([SM 48/4/7]), measured drawings of an unidentifed piazza [Unidentified piazza, Rome c.1759-64, Measured drawings (3)] and - another purchased drawing - design for a palazzo [Design for an unidentified palazzo by an unidentified Italian architect, c1730s, acquired 1759-64].

Sizes, medium and border are comparable with the smaller drawings from the Visentini workshop at the RIBA Drawings Collection. Between about 1740 and the early 1760s, the atelier run by Antonio Visentini (1688-1782) produced many hundreds of impersonal orthogonal drawings of which more than a thousand are in English collections. Made by draughtsmen with varying levels of skills, many of the drawings are not measured and drawn from the buildings themselves but were copied from engravings and books. Many of the ancient monuments of Rome and elsewhere were in a ruined state and plans and elevations had to be conjectured from often slender physical evidence. In Dance's time, for instance only the centre of the Arch of Titus had survived, being restored in the 1820s. In any case, proper measuring was not a simple process: permits had to be sought, scaffolding erected and the bases of columns and walls were likely to be buried in fallen masonry and detritus. The measuring draughtsman needed a good head for heights and an assistant to hold ladders, plumb lines, measuring rods and tapes. As John McAndrew (1974, p.10) points out of Visentini's drawings: 'It cannot often have been possible to measure anything higher than a man could reach, and verticals are consequently the least reliable dimensions; many buildings are drawn disproportionately low.' Except for Visentini, little is know about other specialists producing orthogonal records of buildings for sale though by 1740 they were being made in Rome and other cities (McAndrew, 1974, p.7).

LITERATURE. Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, J.McAndrew, Antonio Visentiini, 1974.