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  • image SM 68/5/6
Drawing. SM 68/5/6. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama
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Reference number

SM 68/5/6

Purpose

François-Joseph Bélanger (1744-1818): Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square, Westminster, 1779

Aspect

[1] Cross-section

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Coupe du milieu de la Gallerie disposée pour être eclairée par en haut Signed: Belanger architect Dated: 1779

Signed and dated

  • 1779

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, pink, raw umber and light blue washes, shaded, multi-ruled border with gold, Prussian blue and black washes (see below) on thick laid paper (610 x 495)

Hand

Bélanger

Notes

The three drawings have the same kind of border: (from the inside working outwards) ruled thin black line, thin applied gold strip, black passé-partout, ruled thin black line, Prussian blue wash to the edge.

The section through the middle of the gallery shows a conical lantern in a deeply coved ceiling. In the foreground is a screen in the form of a Palladian motif with two pairs of fluted Ionic columns supporting a semi-circular keystoned arch and an entablature in which the frieze is decorated with garlands and festoons. Above the cornice are winged representations of Art and Science as well as military and naval trophies, griffins and urns, and putti supporting a scallop shell. Below, canephorae and nymphs support lesser arches and candelabra and in an alcove is a seated Minervae on a pedestal.

REPRODUCED. D. Stillman, 'The Gallery for Lansdowne House', Art Bulletin, LII, 1970, fig.9.

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).