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- 1803-1807
Medium and dimensions
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In careful italicised Roman capitals LONDON
Faint pencil
NOTE TO [SM D1/3/31], [SM D1/3/30], [SM D1/3/33], [SM D1/3/32], [SM D1/3/34], [SM D1/4/59], [SM D1/3/35]. [SM D1/4/63], [SM D1/3/36]
The portico has two pairs of plain, that is, unfluted, baseless Doric columns with diameters of 3 feet 6 inches rising to 2 feet 10 inches, spaced 10 feet 8 inches centre to centre on stepped plinths 16 feet 2 inches wide. The height of the columns is 20 feet 7 inches, less than six diameters. Kalman points out (p.159) that Dance commits an anachronism by centering the end of triglyphs over the corner columns instead of placing them at the ends as the Greeks did. However, his insertion of two triglyphs over each intercolumniation does follow Greek precedent.
Though Dance seems to have had Paestum in mind when he designed the portico, the catalogue of his library, sold after his death, incudes neither Thomas Major's The Ruins of Paestum (1768) nor C.-M. Delagardette's Les Ruines de Paestum ou Posidonia (1798); Soane's library had two copies of Major's book as well as the original drawings. Comparison with the earlier publication shows that Dance did not closely follow the information given there and Kalman (p.159) considers that his proportions and details 'resemble those of Nicholas Revett's porticoes at Standlynch (Trafalgar) House, Wiltshire (1766) and Ayot St Lawrence Church, Hertfordshire (1778). Revett's columns are fluted only at the extremities, closely following the Doric order of the Temple of Apollo at Delos which he had measured' and published in J. Stuart and N. Revett, Antiquities of Athens, III, 1794, chapter X. Dance had all four volumes of Antiquities (1762-1816) and probably derived the order for the Stratton portico from plate II, chapter I, volume I (see note to [SM D1/3/35].
The Greek Doric portico at Stratton was a fairly early example in Britain though, as Kalman (p.159) points out. 'Dance's combination of unfluted baseless Doric columns with doubled triglyphs was preceded by Soane's semicircular portico at Sydney Lodge', Hamble, Hampshire, 1793-5.
Level
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).