Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square, Westminster, c.1788-94
  • image Image 1 for SM D3/3/1
  • image Image 2 for SM D3/3/1
Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image
Print this image in A4 view  (icon indicating printer link)
  • image Image 1 for SM D3/3/1
  • image Image 2 for SM D3/3/1

Reference number

SM D3/3/1

Purpose

Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square, Westminster, c.1788-94

Aspect

[3] Sectional upward perspective of exedra, lunette window and part of gallery and details of meander decoration

Scale

4/15 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • c.1788-94

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and sepia wash, trace lines on laid paper (500 x 670)

Hand

Dance

Notes

Dance is concentrating here on the design of the arch that links the semicircular vault of the gallery to the three-quarter domed exedræ at either end. The greater height of the domical ceilings of the exedræ to the semicircular ceiling of the gallery allowed for a lunette window (inset over a lintel with semicircular arched soffit) not visible from the central part of the gallery but introducing indirect or borrowed light to the exedræ.

REPRODUCED. D. Stillman, 'The Gallery for Lansdowne House', Art Bulletin, LII, 1970, pp.75-80, fig.13; Stroud fig.54a.

Verso
Plan of exedra with five semicircular alcoves, section through arch between exedra and gallery, elevation of exedra with painted decoration in Pompeian style, elevation of dome, bird's-eye perspective, upward perspective of dome and arch and rough details

Pen, raw umber and sepia washes, pencil

Dance's lunettes are a significant element of his design for the Lansdowne library. The idea of indirect lighting had been explored by architects of the Baroque period and by Piranesi (in his alterations to St John Lateran, 1763-4) but Dance's use of it in a domestic context is noteworthy. He suggested a similar use of semicircular windows over segmental arches in his studies for Soane's Bank Stock Office in the Bank of England, 1791-2.

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).