[1] Alternative rough designs sent by Soane to Thomas Pitt from Milan, August 1779

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [1] Alternative rough designs sent by Soane to Thomas Pitt from Milan, August 1779

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
    - Designs for a 'Castello d'acqua', August 1779-1780, with later rough alternative designs by George Dance (10)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM volume 42/184

Purpose

[1] Alternative rough designs sent by Soane to Thomas Pitt from Milan, August 1779

Aspect

(recto) Plan of building and fountains, elevation showing alternative designs for dome and portico, corresponding section, (pencil, rubbed) alternative elevation. Labelled No 2 / At the same, supposing there to be no absolute necessity for the introducing of Rocks &c / In this design the / temples are omitt'd / being doubtful of being / at Liberty to treat the / subject as an / Antique Edifice and b b Reservoirs arch'd over / & paved level with the / Portico, less three steps and Fountains not shewn in the Elevation to keep / the Architecture entire and Reservoir / 120:0 [feet], Hydraulic, Turncock, Keeper, Secret[ary], Committee. (of the elevation and section) The Elevation presents two Ideas the one to cover / over the Great Reservoir, the other to leave it open / The section the same
(verso, left hand side) Plan and elevation for an alternative scheme set in a piazza, alternative thumbnail cruciform and triangular plans, labelled Water
(verso, right hand side) Part-plan and elevation for an alternative scheme. Plan labelled a Reservoir / b Apartments / for the Keepers / &c / c Committee Room / d Temples to the / 2 chief River Gods / e Fountain and A A A A (against 4 pedestals) On each of these / Pedestals a river God. And It will be (I believe) necessary to lower the Steps considerably. / The Reservoir will hold ab^t 15,000 Hogsheads of Water. Query / if that is any thing like the Quantity ? / I believe the Reservoir must be cover'd to prevent the water being / heated, in the last page is a design with it open / The fountains are marked in to shew their situation only, & are suppos'd / to be much unlike what would be introduced in the Fair designs

Scale

(verso, right hand side) bar scale divided and numbered 1 to 15 with each subdivision equalling 1/9 inch

Inscribed

as above

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen, pencil on entire sheet of laid secretary paper with four fold marks (224 x370)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

part of IV

Notes

It seems that Soane's sketch designs and letters were sent to Thomas Pitt, nephew of the recently deceased Earl of Chatham. Pitt arrived in Rome, early in December 1778. He was an accomplished amateur architect and became a life-long friend to Soane. Both travelled to Naples in the winter of 1778 and there Pitt became ill and stayed for some months.

The first designs shown here experiment with two schemes. Scheme 1 is a single storey building with a shallow, stepped dome akin to the design for the so-called Chatham mausoleum but with an X-plan close to the one for James King's mausoleum (q.q.v). Scheme 2 (labelled No 2) has a stretched oval plan and the elevation and section have both a domical and a non-domical solution; a further (pencil) elevation has a dome and a tall arched entrance. Verso, there is a related variant design based on a stretched oval plan with a large uncovered reservoir enclosed by offices and colonnades.

du Prey (op.cit. 1977; 1982) fully discusses these drawings.

Literature

P. du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.243-54
P. du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp.110-11, 177-84

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).