[2] Unfinished measured drawing, probably after Thomas Hardwick

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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 in Italy: measured drawings made or copied, 1778-80
    - Italy: Rome: Colosseum, c. May-June 1778 (6)

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Reference number

SM 45/3/49

Purpose

[2] Unfinished measured drawing, probably after Thomas Hardwick

Aspect

Section/elevation of an ideal reconstruction

Scale

1/22 in to 1ft

Inscribed

as above

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia wash, pencil within triple ruled border with box for title on laid paper (492 x 938)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

J Whatman (twice) and fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche with GR below

Notes

The drawing is almost complete but lacking a title and other finishing touches.

Soane's sketchbook 'Italian Sketches' 1779 (SM volume 39, 6-8r,9r) has a few details of the Colosseum, but he probably acquired most of his information from Hardwick who made the Colosseum a particular subject of study, commissioning a model and communicating a paper to the Society of Antiquaries. P.du Prey, (J.Lever, editor), Catalogue of the the Drawings Collections of the Royal Institute of British Architects, G-K, 1973, p.92¹ mentions 'two elevations and an ideal sectional reconstruction in John Soane's collection [that] may record the appearance of [lost] Hardwick originals copied ... in the summer of 1778'. Hardwick's drawings at the RIBA Drawings Collection are a plan 'from actual admeasurements / In 1778', and an elevation of one bay inscribed 'Elevation of part of the / Colosseum - 1778 - T.Hardwick', and 'the Model to be made 1/11 [the 11 blotted] of an Inch to a Foot' (SB57/6-7).

Literature

P.du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp. 125-6

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).