[4] Design

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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)

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Reference number

SM 45/1/22

Purpose

[4] Design

Aspect

Ground plan, with site plan (to a reduced scale) and detail of entablature to a smaller scale, (feint pencil) sketch of sculpted figure

Scale

bar scale of 1/16 in to 1 ft, and not stated, and another of 1/12 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

(? Carlo Labruzzi) IL PIANO D'VN DISEGNO PER VN CASTELLO D'ACQVA, (Soane) labelled (dome) 60 feet Diam^r, (each of 4 pavilions) 22 feet Square, (pencil) Alcove, door, (feint pencil) Il Danubio nell' Europa / Il Gange nell' Asia / Il Nilo nell' Africa / Il Argentano nell' Indie / Take the section on the Line a. b. [illegible] / no water [illegible] reclines [illegible] / Another section C D and (pencil, amendments) door and altar

Medium and dimensions

Pen, black, sepia and green washes, pencil additions including setting up lines for a perspective within triple ruled and sepia wash border on laid paper (709 x 494)

Hand

Soane and ? Carlo Labruzzi (P. du Prey's attribution)

Watermark

J Whatman, fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche with GR below

Notes

In this finished design, Soane decided on an X-plan. He reduced the diameter of the domed area from 120 to 60 feet and enclosed it so as to make a water-tight tank. The geometry of the design was much improved: the four sides became concave with the four pavilions placed squarely at each corner, the whole enclosed by a stepped circular terrace placed on a square platform with fountains at each corner. The four concave sides of the building with their pavilions embrace two pools and two terraces, each fronted by a segmental stair on a convex plan.

Literature

P. du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.274-8
P. du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp.184-6

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).