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Purpose

Designs for the altarpiece, St Peter's Walworth, London, 1825 (3)

Notes

The series of altarpiece designs consist of three drawings (Holy Trinity, Marylebone does not have any specific drawings, but St. John's, Bethnal Green has five). Two further drawings for teh St Peter's altarpiece are in the V&A collection (E.352-1916; E. 353. 1916). The St Peter's corpus is, however, the most detailed with regards to the polychromy, and in outlining the specific painted effects required.

Faux marble effects were common during the period, and Soane's own house at No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields testifies to its use on the staircase (giallo antico) and in the front hallway (porphyry). Two marble table-tops inset with a variety of different marble and hard stone specimen squares are in the Soane collection, which Soane and clients could have used for ideas (SM L100; SM M301.A).

The Soane Office Day Book for Monday to Wednesday the 12-14 July 1824 record Stephen Burchell working on drawings for the altarpiece. It is probable the written contract involving the painter, James Hunt, was added in January 1825.

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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.

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Contents of Designs for the altarpiece, St Peter's Walworth, London, 1825 (3)