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Reference number
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Signed and dated
- 1794
(Meyer) Novr 11th 1794 - 1761-3 1794-5
(Meyer) Novr 11th 1794
Medium and dimensions
Hand
Notes
The entry in Soane's Office Day Book for 11 November 1794 includes Meyer left at Mr Dance's / No.3 large Sketches of Tivoli Capital and Copying large Sketches / of Tivoli Capital Meyer. The Day Book entry for the day before, 10 November, includes The Bank / Drawing Capital of Tivoli / at large for modelling / ... Meyer. It seems that Meyer borrowed drawings made by Dance and copied them. That Dance re-drew the Tivoli capital more than 30 years after he had first measured and drawn it on site is puzzling. However, if it is assumed that the drawings catalogue here [D3/1/1(b)], [D3/1/1(a)], [D3/1/1(c)], [D3/2/5(a)], [D3/2/5(b)], [D3/2/5(c)], [D3,2/5(d)], [D3/2/5(e)], [D3/2/4], [D3/2/6], [D3/1/9], [D3/2/7], [D3/1/2], [D3/1/3], [D3/1/5], [D3/1/4], [D3/1/6] are all that he brought back from Italy, or at any rate, all that Dance had by 1794, there is a surprising lack of fully drawn-out details. While [SM D3/1/1(c)], [SM D3/2/5(a)], [SM D3/2/5(b)], [SM D3/2/5(c)], [SM D3,2/5(d)], [SM D3/2/5(e)] are initial studies only and [SM D3/2/6], [SM D3/1/9], [SM D3/2/7] are full-size details of the capital and are incomplete as a set. Perhaps Dance was embarrassed into reconstructing from his rough but dimensional sketches the necessary full-size details. The following January, when more details were required, he allowed Meyer to copy from his original drawings, Dance's soft smudgy pencil being translated into pen and ink.
Other copies like [SM D3/1/12] seem not to be part of Soane's collection though these are five drawings, in Soane's hand, after measured drawings by Dance of details from the Temple of Vesta including the capital, catalogued as made c.1780, presumably soon after his return from Italy in June of that year [SM 45/5/1-5].
The reference by Meyer to drawing the capital full size 'for modelling' suggests that a prototype capital was made for Soane's approval before use on the northwest corner of the Bank of England. There are, in fact, two Tivoli capitals at the Soane Museum, one on the south side of the Monk's Yard, and another that was part of the 'pasticcio' a composite pylon of ancient and modern fragments. Both correspond to the executed capital that was carried out to the same size as the original and both are 'perfect' and could either be prototypes or leftover 'spares'.
[SM D3/1/11], [SM D3/1/13], [SM D3/1/10], [SM D3/1/8] Copy drawings by Meyer, three dated 1795, of the capital for use by Soane for the Bank of England's Tivoli Corner.
Level
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).