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Capriccio showing a compartmented courtyard with steps surrounded by colonnades with single-bay pedimented pavilions on either side of an oval colonnade with half an upper storey. On one side is a columned exedra with windows and doors.
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Reference number
Adam vol.55/43
Purpose
Capriccio showing a compartmented courtyard with steps surrounded by colonnades with single-bay pedimented pavilions on either side of an oval colonnade with half an upper storey. On one side is a columned exedra with windows and doors.
Aspect
Perspective
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink on drawing 43
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1755 - 56
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, pen94 x 272
Hand
Robert Adam
Notes
The courtyard shown, especially due to the exedrae forms, may have been inspired by prints of the Cortile del Belvedere, Rome, Italy and its renaissance festivities. The plan to this perspective is depicted in Adam vol.55/42 and shows the court flooded, with three boats in a sunken rectangular court with steps. In both Rome and Florence there was a long tradition from antiquity of flooding courtyards for aquatic spectacles, and the plan may depict the courtyard so converted; it may have been inspired by a sixteenth-century print.The bird's-eye technique used here is unusual for Robert Adam but is seen elsewhere in his drawings for the rebuilding of Lisbon, Portugal in Adam volume 9 (see Adam vol.9/56), and also in Adam vol.55/47. It may indicate the influence of Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1731-1812).
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