[5] Measured drawing

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Soane's architectural education: Royal Academy and Italy including measured drawings: 1770-1780
  - Soane in Italy: measured drawings made or copied, 1778-80
    - Italy: Rome: Pantheon (later Church of Santa Maria ad Martyres), 1778 (8)

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Reference number

SM 45/3/53

Purpose

[5] Measured drawing

Aspect

Section on east-west axis with thumbnail details of pedimented niche and window (adapted from a drawing by Thomas Hardwick)

Scale

bar scale of 1/9 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

At two different measuremt^ts/ Greatest height from level of Pavement to extreme edge of Opening 147.5 / 146.8 5/16 / 146.8 / All the Columns & Pilasters of great niches of Gialle Briciato without exception & / the Capitols & Vases of White Marble / the Columns to the Altars of Porphyry & Giallo, materials labelled including Giallo Briciato, Porphyry, Bianco, dado all round / Pavon., Verde

Medium and dimensions

Pen, light blue, raw umber, warm sepia and pink washes, shaded within black wash border on laid paper backed with wove paper (618 x 970)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

obscured

Notes

This drawing is 'an adaptation of an earlier one drawn by Hardwick' (du Prey, 1977, op.cit. p.119). Hardwick's drawings of the Pantheon are in the RIBA Drawings Collection (SA26/7 and SA69/2(1-8). It was used for Soane's Royal Academy lectures and like others, seems to have been 'touched up' for that purpose. For instance, some fine pen lines have been crudely gone over with a denser, thicker pen, the two figures in the portico may have been added to emphasise the huge scale of the building and the strong black wash border has certainly been added.

The drawing is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (section through portico, Box A 148A, No.3436.183. See P.du Prey, Sir John Soane, 1985, in series of 'Catalogues of architectural drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum', catalogue 4).

The Pantheon was, and is, for architects, the key building of ancient Rome. First built in 25BC by Marcus Vispanis Agrippa, it was rebuilt on a circular plan (the portico with its inscription being re-used) by Hadrian in A.D.120-5. And consecrated as a church in 608.

Literature

P.du Prey, 'Soane and Hardwick in Rome: a Neo-Classical partnership', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XV, 1972, pp.64-5
P.du Prey, (J.Lever editor), Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, volume G-K, 1973, p.92²
P.du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.117-9

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).