[2] Copy of a measured drawing

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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: Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (later Church of San Lorenzo in Miranda) (3)

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Reference number

SM 44/8/14

Purpose

[2] Copy of a measured drawing

Aspect

Elevation, incompletely drawn, of six column front with the architrave (sic) inscribed DIVO ANTONINO ET and below, on the frieze DIVAE FAUSTINAE EX S[ENATUS} C [ONSULTO]

Scale

Measured w^hSpanish Feet divided into 18 inches

Inscribed

as above, dimensions given in Spanish p[ie]

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil on coarse laid paper (355 x 402)

Hand

Soane

Notes

Inscribed and drawn by Soane, this drawing must be a copy since Soane uses a scale of Spanish Feet divided into 18 inches. The Spanish foot or 'pie' varied in length depending on region but (latterly and pre-metric) was smaller than an English foot by an inch or more. Soane made a freehand drawing of the entablature in profile with dimensions in English feet and inches in a sketchbook see (in Sketchbooks catalogue): 'Miscellaneous Sketches', 1780-2 (SM volume 40, f.72recto). On this, he marked the frieze as 3 feet 3 inches (English feet) high while on drawing 3 it is marked as p 3.10½ (Spanish feet). Professor du Prey (January/February 2009) suggests that the Spaniard Juan de Villaneuva was in Rome earlier and that he or or some successor from the Madrid Academy may have been Soane's source or possible collaborator.

The drawing shows the ten surviving Corinthian columns of a temple built by Antoninus and dedicated to his wife the Empress Faustina, who died A.D.141. After his death in A.D.161, the temple was dedicated to both of them. (L. Richardson, jr, A New topographical dictionary of ancient Rome, Baltimore, 1992)

Converted into the Church of San Lorenzo in Miranda at some time before the 12th century and given a Baroque facade in 1602.

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).