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  • image SM Adam volume 14/132
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 14/132

Purpose

[48] Finished drawing for the Etruscan room / third drawing room, c1775, as executed

Aspect

Elevation of a room with Etruscan-style ornamentation and a lit á la polonaise bed with block legs ornamented with drop calyx and rosettes, a frieze of enclosed anthemia and a skirt of lambrequins ornamented with calyx and arabesques. The oval canopy is ornamented with bands of foils and rope moulding, surmounted by rosette crenellations with pendent rosettes and a band of lambrequins ornamented with calyx. Above, the dome is ornamented with rosettes and swags suspending a peltoid shield. The bed is flanked by doors with ornamental panels, with the lower panel as SM Adam volume 5/4, the middle panel as SM Adam volume 5/12 and the upper panel containing a cameo surmounted by arabesques and an urn. The overdoors are ornamented with a tablet depicting a fan and urns and this is surmounted by a tripod bearing an urn flanked by griffins. Below there is an apron with a cameo and winged figures bearing festoons and this is flanked with drop calyx suspending further tablets and oil lamps. All this is set within a relieving arch. Above the chair rail there is an ornamental band of interlacing circles containing medallions and anthemia, with geometric bands above and below. Above this there are winged sphinxes, drop calyx and festoons of calyx surmounted by urns and lion masks within wreaths which suspend further medallions, and with tubular flowers bearing birds above. The room has a frieze as for the lady's dressing room, SM Adam volume 53/8

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Etruscan room at Lady Home's / (and in pencil) 2 / 132

Signed and dated

  • c1775
    c1775

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including olive green, Indian yellow and black on laid paper (422 x 323)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi

Verso

(In modern curatorial hand, pencil) Vol 14 69

Watermark

GR surmounted by a fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 48
Hussey and Oswald, 1934, pp. 21-22, 26
Harris, 1963, p. 57, 99
Whinney, 1969, pp. 52-3, 66
King, 2001, Volume I, pp. 27, 197-198, 290, fig. 408
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Original Drawings of Robert and James Adam, Kenwood House, London, 1953

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).