[2] Royal Academy Gold Medal competition design, November 1776

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [2] Royal Academy Gold Medal competition design, November 1776

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Soane's architectural education: Royal Academy and Italy including measured drawings: 1770-1780
  - Soane's architectural education including theoretical designs made for the Royal Academy Schools and for exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1770-80, and in Italy, 1778-80
    - Design for a Triumphal Bridge for the Royal Academy Schools Gold Medal competition 1776, later revised and sent to the Parma Academy, 1780, with preliminary designs by George Dance, 1776 and ? 1778, and later copies and perspectives, 1796-c.1827 (21)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM 12/5/1

Purpose

[2] Royal Academy Gold Medal competition design, November 1776

Aspect

Plan of the Superstructure of a Design for a Triumphal Bridge November 4^th1776

Scale

bar scale equivalent to 3/8 in to 10 ft

Inscribed

as above and Front extends Eleven Hundred, Eighty Six Feet, This [entrance] front extends five hundred & twenty five feet, labelled including Col. Rostr.[ata] (3 times), Mars et Bellona / 100 feet diam^r, Victoria / 110 feet by 100 feet, Pax et Concordia / 100 feet diam^r (three principal rotundas), Fame, Minerva, Hercules, Fortune (four lesser rectangular enclosures, 35' by 37') ), Corridor (five times), Cortile / 214 ^Feet by 110 ^Feet(twice) and dimensions given

Signed and dated

November 4^th 1776

Medium and dimensions

Pen and light pink wash, pencil within double pen and black wash border on 3 sheets of laid paper joined, stuck down on wove paper (662 x 1251)

Hand

Soane (title inscribed by Baldwin)

Watermark

n/a

Notes

Soane submitted his entry early in November 1776, and with his five-hour sketch design for the entrance to a church (q.v.) he won the Gold Medal of the Royal Academy, presented to him on or about 10 December 1776. This plan may be attributed to Soane, its pallid rendering with diluted ink and light pink wash on such a large-sized sheet gives a weak effect. The labelling is by him though the inscribed title is by another hand.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).