Buildings in Padua, Rome and Vicenza

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George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Italy 1759-1764 (15)
  - Buildings in Padua, Rome and Vicenza (13). Record drawings by Italian draughtsmen, acquired c.1759-64 (13)

unidentified 18th C Italian architect (? Antonio Adami or Antonio Visentini), Vicenza, arch. SM 44/8/7. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo Ardon Bar-Hama

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Reference number

SM 44/8/7

Purpose

Buildings in Padua, Rome and Vicenza

Aspect

[12] Plan and elevation of te Arch of the Stairs, Vicenza

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Arco antico di Vicenza

Signed and dated

1759-64

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen and sepia wash, shaded, within double ruled border on laid paper (490 x 385)

Hand

Italian draughtsman

Watermark

encircled fleur-de-lis

Notes

The drawing shows a single-opening arch with four attached columns on each side reached by 16 steps. Drawings for the same subject from the Visentini workshop/studio (See Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects. J.McAndrew, Antonio Visentini, 1974, identify the Arco antico di Vicenza as the 'Arco delle Scalette' (degli Scalinetti) that 'stands at the foot of 192 steps leading to the pilgrimage basilica at the top of the Monte Berico ... set up in 1595, fifteen years after the death of Palladio, to whom it was long attributed and sometimes still is.' A comparison shows some differences; in particular, the order is Doric in the RIBA's drawing (No.2) and Corinthian in the one bought by Dance.

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).