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Reference number

SM D4/11/5

Purpose

Competition design for a public gallery awarded the Gold Medal of the Parma Academy n 1763, copies 1763, copies 1763-c.1765 and 1794 or later

Aspect

[1] Ground floor plan

Scale

Palmi Roman (approximately 3 in to 110 ft - English feet)

Inscribed

No 1, labelled A to P and key: A Ingressi principali / B Gran Sala d'ingresso / C Gran Galleria, ornata con Quadri Statue, Basi relièvi etc. / D Vestiboli che introducono dalle Sale d'ingresso alle Rotonde / E Rotonde scoperta al di sopra, ornate di Statue, Bassu relievi etc / F Fontane nel mezzo / G Quattro Stanze ricche per collocarvi, varie curiosità si / antiche che moderne / H Abitazioni per uso d'ufficial o ministri destinati all / custodià della fabrica / I Scale di dette abitazioni / L Site per Guarda roba / M Cortilli con Portici all' intorno ornati di Statue / N Fontana nel mezzo / O Ingressi Laterali / P Scale per ascendere a dette ingressi

Signed and dated

  • 1763

Medium and dimensions

Pen and sepia wash, pencil within double ruled brown and black pen and raw umber wash border on laid paper (695 x 475)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

J Whatman and fleur-de-lis in crowned cartouche and GR below

Notes

This is essentially an H-plan with the cross-bar containing the 'Gran Galleria', flanked either side by a cortile with a fountain, and linking the front and back wings, which are identical in plan and accommodation. These wings consist of a square, central entrance all approached by wide stairs and an eight-column colonnade. Either side of the entrance halls are apsidally ended vestibules that lead to top-lit rotundas, each with a central fountain, and a concluding rectangular gallery. Dance's planning is symmetrically organised around the two key lateral axes of the enfilade arrangement of rooms in a variety of shapes (and heights) either side of the entrance hall, and the grand central axis of the great gallery with minor longitudinal axes on each side.

[SM D4/11/5] is laid out so that the H-plan is on its side with the cross-bar vertical (that is parallel with the sides of the sheet); [SM D4/11/3] is the same as Soane's copy for his Royal Academy Lectures. The plan remaining in Parma (Accademia di Belle Arti, reproduced in D. Stillman, English Neo-classical architecture, vol.II, 1988, fig.10) is titled and lettered so that the H-plan clearly reads as such, as does [SM D4/11/1]. This means that the entrances are shown on each side rather than conventionally at the bottom (and top) of the sheet, and the dramatic length of the great gallery with its twin entrance halls is made less significant. REPRODUCED. R. Middleton, 'The Sculpture Gallery at Newby Hall', AA Files, 1986, XIII, fig.11.

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).