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  • image Adam vol.55/31

Reference number

Adam vol.55/31

Purpose

Capriccio showing an interior elevation for an aedicular doorway framed by arabesque pilasters with animal sculpture on decorated bases below circular, framed paintings.

Aspect

Elevationverso detail

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 31verso inscribed in ink in Robert Adam's hand - sempre al delei commanda / sempre al sura commanda / sara sempre va ben venuta / sempre il ben venuta

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Pen76 x 164, trimmed at top

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Landscape detail in pen. The inscription is part of an Italian grammar lesson, written in Robert Adam's hand.

Notes

The drawing suggests a contemporary rather than an antique interior, especially in the circular, framed pictures, which are possibly portraits. It can be compared with Adam vol.55/58, which shows an even more obviously contemporary interior.

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).