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  • image Image 1 for SM 45/1/8 recto and verso
  • image Image 2 for SM 45/1/8 recto and verso

Reference number

SM 45/1/8 recto and verso

Purpose

[1] Preliminary measured drawings of Santa Maria Maggiore and (verso) of the Temple of Minerva Medica, made in collaboration with Thomas Hardwick, June 1778

Aspect

(recto) Rough, incomplete half-plan and part-plans of the church; (verso) Rough plan and part-plans including Upper Plan and part-section of Minerva Medica

Inscribed

(recto) Baldachino labelled Giallo Antico, Grato,Porphyr Col[umn] 2 feet diamr, Cipoline, Granitello, At the opposite end a Niche, Philip the 4th of Spain and dimensions given; (verso) as above, Great Arch (twice), Statue, dimensions given and calculations

Signed and dated

  • (recto) June 16, 1778 with Mr Hardwicke and (verso) June 19 1778

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil (verso, with hatching) on coarse laid paper with four fold marks (562 x 438)

Hand

Soane with Thomas Hardwick

Verso

see above

Watermark

Emptor within scrolly cartouche and encircled fleur-de-lis with V

Notes

The preparatory drawing of Santa Maria Maggiore was made with Thomas Hardwick for a finished plan that each drew separately (Hardwick's plan, dated June 1778) and is in the RIBA Drawings Collection (SB 60/12). Thus, the Temple of Minerva was another collaborative effort with Hardwick (see Italy: Rome: Temple of Minerva Medica).

The basilica church of Santa Maria Maggiore was built in the 4th century, reconstructed in the following century and altered and added to since.

Literature

recto: P.du Prey, 'Soane and Hardwick in Rome: a Neo-Classical partnership', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XV, 1972, pp.54,60
recto: P.du Prey, (J.Lever editor), Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, volume G-K, 1973, p.91
recto: P.du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp. 113-4
recto: P. du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp.151-4
verso: P.du Prey, 'Soane and Hardwick...', 1972, pp.54, 61
verso: P.du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.113-4

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).