[15] Preliminary design for alterations to the west front of the quadrangle, c1784, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Public buildings
  - King's College, Cambridge, designs for a chapel altar, new college buildings and a library, 1768-88, unexecuted (28)
    - Preliminary design and finished drawing for alterations to the west front of the quadrangle, c1784, unexecuted (2)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 1/58

Purpose

[15] Preliminary design for alterations to the west front of the quadrangle, c1784, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a three-storey, twenty-one-bay building, with a rusticated ground-storey level and a balustraded, hipped roof. At the ground-storey level there are stepped entrances in the third, eighth, fourteenth and nineteenth bays and the central three bays are projecting. The central bay contains a pedimented, arched entrance articulated by Tuscan columns and surmounted by reclining figures, with a Diocletian window flanked by swags beyond. The central bay is flanked by raised, paired, fluted Ionic columns. The central three bays are alternatively shown as pedimented, with an oculus set within the tympanum, and as surmounted by a pedestal with a central tablet, flanked by roundels and supporting statuary. Beyond this there is a central belvedere, ornamented with swags, containing a pedimented clock and surmounted by a ribbed dome, bearing a weather vane. On the left-hand side the terminating three bays of the building are projecting, forming a pedimented pavilion, articulated by Ionic columns and surmounted by statuary

Scale

bar scale of 3/4 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Kings College Cambridge (modern curatorial hand, pencil) / East (crossed through) / The West Side of the Quadrangle designed and executed by Mr Gibbs- / Sketch for altering the front of Mr Gibbs Building towards the Quadrangle (all in pencil)

Signed and dated

c1784
c1784

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (482 x 280)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

Watermark

J KOOL surmounted by fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, pp. 173-79; Index, p. 6
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 53
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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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