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  • image Adam vol.55/117
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/117

Purpose

Capriccio showing a sarcophagus with segmental lid with antefixae. Inset is a group of funerary urns, all on a rectangular base with inscription panel; on either side are two busts.

Aspect

Perspectiveverso details

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 117

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, grey and brown washes216 x 220

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Pen and wash capricci showing various groups of trees of different species, and two details of clumps of vegetation.

Notes

The sarcophagus is based on the so-called Tomb of Nero, which was engraved by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) in Le Antichitá Romane of May1756 as 'fuori di Porta del Popolo sull'antica Via Cassia'. There are other tomb capricci in this volume and in volume 9, see Adam vol.9/32 and 42.

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).