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  • image Image 1 for SM D3/14/25
  • image Image 2 for SM D3/14/25

Reference number

SM D3/14/25

Purpose

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

Aspect

[3] Rough plan, part plan, sections and elevation for a church on a circular plan

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

Verso Rough plan, elevation, section, detail and interior perspective for a church on a Greek cross plan Pen, hatching The Greek cross plan has (internally) apsidal ends with an alcove between each arm; the circular nave is roofed by a dome supported on piers with engaged columns bearing sculptured angels and entrance is through a portico into a narthex. It is difficult to imagine a client for such a scheme, at once so Baroque and Roman (Catholic) and this was perhaps a jeu d'esprit. The size of the building, medium and support do not suggest a connection with [SM D3/14/34] and [SM D3/14/32] or, indeed, with Soane's Bank Stock Office.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, hatching, with unrelated splodges of sepia and raw umber washes on laid paper (230 x 190)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

Willmot? (cut)

Notes

The recto shows a circular plan with four semicircular projections framed by columns and a single elliptical projection; presumably the chancel, framed by paired columns; the elevation shows a domed building with a lantern or oculus and lunette clerestory windows.

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).