Farnese Theatre, Parma, c.1759-64

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Farnese Theatre, Parma, c.1759-64

Browse

George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Italy 1759-1764 (15)
  - Farnese Theatre, Parma, c.1759-64 (1)

Drawing. SM 48/4/6. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM 48/4/6

Purpose

Farnese Theatre, Parma, c.1759-64

Aspect

[1] Plan

Scale

(Dance) Scala di Braccia 10 di Parma

Inscribed

(Italian hand) Pianta / del celebre Teatro di Parma, labelled (Dance?) Proscenio Orchestra and numbered 1 to 7 with key referring to Ingresso, Scala, Corridore and Sedili

Signed and dated

c.1759-64

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen, pencil on laid paper (240 x 375)

Hand

Dance, Italian hand

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and LVG

Notes

If the plan was measured and drawn by Dance - it could be someone else's drawings that Dance inscribed or a copy of a drawing made by another - it suggests that he must have visited Parma. However, in a letter to his father he wrote of sending his drawings to Parma and of having the gold medal he won for his competition design for a public gallery (see [SM D4/11/1]) sent to him in Rome. Frank Salmon (e-mail, 18 June 2002) confirms that Dance posted his competition entry and that though there is no evidence for his visiting Parma on his return journey northwards, he might well have done so.

Built 1612-28 to the design of Giovanni Battista Aleottis (1546-1636), the Teatro Farnese was largely destroyed in World War II.

See also competition design for a large building with a theatre, c.1760 [SM 48/4/4].

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).