This plan was previously listed (in an inventory made by Joseph Bonomi, Soane Museum curator 1861-78) under 'Sundry Italian drawings' as a plan 'of a design for a Theatre etc. etc.'. The more developed part is indeed for a theatre that forms a prominent part of the overall building. The puzzle is what kind of accommodation was intended within the H-wings, what was the reason behind the formal park-like setting and what was the general purpose of the building?

The impression the drawing gives is of an 'esquisse' by an ambitious but somewhat naive student who lost heart before completing the design. Frank Salmon (letter, 12 June 2002) gives the case as follows: 'My reaction to the drawing is to say that it does look like the type of drawing made for Italian concorsi around the late 1750s to early 1760s. But can it be identified with the 1762 Parma competition which Dance certainly told the academy he was going to enter? The subject in 1762 called for a country house for a wealthy private man of taste, sited on the slope of a hill with woods and various gardens. So far so good, perhaps (though the prominence of the theatre seems problematic), but the requirements then go on to say that there should be terraces in the garden, with an outlet at the top releasing water in a winding stream down the hill. So the landscape requirements don't seem to be met in the drawing. It crosses my mind that Dance might have attempted an entry for the 1762 Concorso Clementino in Rome. The subject that year was similar to Parma: a palace for a great Prince in a delightful location with the accommodation for numerous courtiers and their families, the whole surrounded by a ditch crossed by a drawbridge with guardhouses. The premiated design in P. Marconi et al, I Disegni di archiettura dell' Archivio storico dell'Accademia di San Luca, vol.I, Rome, 1974. Two competitors (Giuseppe Ridolfi and Dionisio Luigi Detant) included theatres in their designs - though again not as prominently as in the drawing. Moreover while the style of the design suggests an attept to catch the eye of the more conservative Roman academicians rather than the Francophile Parmesan ones, its tentative nature looks less like the quite mature Dance of the 1761 Parma competition, which also rules out, I think, the possibility that this was a draft for Dance's 1764 morceau de réception which the Accademia di San Luca in Rome requested but apparently never received.'