Temple of Hercules, Cora, Cori, c.1759-64

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George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Italy 1759-1764 (15)
  - Temple of Hercules, Cora, Cori. c.1759-64 (1)

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Reference number

SM D3/1/18

Purpose

Temple of Hercules, Cora, Cori, c.1759-64

Aspect

[1] Rough plan and elevation of the temple, and details of the Doric order and shouldered architrave to door

Scale

to various scales

Inscribed

Temple at Cori, inscription in the Frease of the Doorcase / MM-LIUS.M.F.L. TVRPILIVS.L.E.DVOMVIRES.DE./SENATVS/ SENTE-TIA.AEDM FACIENDAM COERAVERVNT EISDEMQVE PROLAVERE and dimensions given

Signed and dated

c.1759-64

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen pencil on coarse laid paper (490 x 655)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

(footed P)

Notes

The small, 2nd-century BC Temple of Hercules at Cora (about 45 kilometres south of Rome) is one of a tiny number of Roman temples in the Doric style.

In his Royal Academy Lecture II Soane used the Temple at Cora as an example of architecture that 'has greatly degenerated by being transplated: that man;y robustness and severity, so strongly marked in Grecian works, is entirely lost' (quoted in D. Watkin, Sir J ohn Soane: Enlightenment thought and the Royal Academy lectures , Cambridge, 1996, p.506). In Lecture IX, Soane uses the Tivoli type inner face of the door, wihich has a shouldered architrave and is narrower at the top than at the bottom, as an example of the ancients' preference for 'large entrances into their temples' (quoted in Watkin, 1996, p.611).

Soane used an elevation of the building in Lecture II, No.14 [SM 19/9/6] and a perspective view of the interior for Lecture IX, No.18. [SM 19/9/5].

Soane asked if he might borrow Dance's drawings of Cora and received a letter from Dance in Upper Gower Street dated 4 October 1819: My Dear Sir / Since you snet for my drawings of the / Temple of Cora I have rummaged in my papers/ in vain and cannot find a single line of / it nor do I recollect or know that I ever had / one dimension of the building if I possessed / any such thing I qou'd send it to you without / delay I have been confined for some time / passed with a furious cough which I caught / attending an old friend to his long home wch / has prevented me from calling upon you / sincerely
Yours / Geo: Dance (SM, Priv.Corr.III.D.5.25)

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.

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).