Unfinished capriccio showing a five-storied building of square plan with corner towers, on battered and rusticated basement with a five-bay façade above with pediment containing sculpture above a thermal window. A steep Gothic dome, topped by a spire is flanked by further spires.

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Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam Volume 55

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Reference number

Adam vol.55/18

Purpose

Unfinished capriccio showing a five-storied building of square plan with corner towers, on battered and rusticated basement with a five-bay façade above with pediment containing sculpture above a thermal window. A steep Gothic dome, topped by a spire is flanked by further spires.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 18

Signed and dated

Undated, possibly 1757

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen253 x 218

Hand

Robert Adam

Watermark

dove on monti

Notes

The mixture of classical and Gothic forms in this drawing is typical of the drawings in the Gothic section of Adam volume 54/Series 4/1-15 that date from 1757, and can also be found in this volume in the unfinished pencil design in 55/20 and the tower in 55/24. The pencil details in this drawing that are un-inked indicate a more Gothic structure than that shown in ink.

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).