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  • image Adam vol.55/78
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/78

Purpose

Capriccio showing the interior of an oval building with aedicular doorway with sculpture on the pediment and columns on either side. Semi-circular windows are on the cornice of the vaulted dome, with similar pattern on the floor.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 78

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Black chalk213 x 183

Hand

Robert Adam (attributed to)

Notes

The composition is probably based on the interior of the oval and domed church of San Andrea al Quirinale in Rome by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Other related exercises can be seen in Adam vol.55/80 and in the Pantheon style found in 55/118 and 147. San Andrea was well illustrated in G. G. de Rossi, Insignium Romae Templorum Prospectus Exteriores Interioresque, Rome, 1684, pls.23-25, which was acquired by John Soane at the Adam sale of 1818 as lot 148 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam, Christie's, London 21 & 22 May 1818).The chalk plan on the verso of Adam vol.55/81 may be the source for this scheme.

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).