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Reference number

SM D3/14/32

Purpose

Preliminary designs for unidentified domed buildings: a mausoleum? and churches

Aspect

[2] Rough interior perspective showing a compartment with a shallow (saucer) dome with circular lantern or oculus supported on massive horseshoe-shaped arches and sketch detail of fan shell decoration

Scale

not to scale

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and brown pen, hatching on laid secretary paper (320 x 200, half of a sheet, see [SM D3/14/34], no fold marks)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

crowned GR and part of W

Notes

Sculptured praying angels on pedestals at the base of the pendentives and a tomb? surrounded by kneeling and standing figures might suggest a mausoleum or a funerary chapel. The scale of these figures emphasises the vast size of the building so that the bases of the piers are almost as high as a person. There is something humorous about Dance's depiction of the interior, which is related to the trefoil plan of [SM D3/14/34] verso.

[SM D3/14/34] and [SM D3/14/32] share the same medium and support as the majority of the drawings attributed to Dance for the Bank Stock Office at the Bank of England made in about November and December 1791. This might suggest a date for Dance's scheme for a mausoleum - if that is what it is. There is a resemblance between the plans, section and interior perspective catalogued above and [SM 10/4/19] and [SM volume 60/40] of the Bank Stock Office scheme, both schemes having a similar dome above horse-shaped arches. However, the paper on which they are drawn differs (laid for [SM D3/14/34] and [SM D3/14/32], wove for [SM 10/4/19] and [SM volume 60/40] for the Bank Stock Office). Daniel Abramson (e-mail 10 January 2000) wrote that of the preliminary designs for domed buildings catalogued here, 'the only one I thought might perhaps be related to the Bank Stock Office is [SM D3/14/34 (verso), because of the dimensions and tripartite division of its central domed space. On the other hand, it is not plausible that Dance would have included the "octagonal outer narthex" ... on a scheme for the Bank Stock Office. The Bank of England's east wing could not have accommodated such an element, and from the Dance drawings definitely related to the Bank Stock Office the architect seems to have been always well aware of the site's limitations. So, I woud have to say even [SM D3/14/34 (verso) is probably not part of the Bank Stock Office set.'

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).