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  • image Adam vol.55/162
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/162

Purpose

Unfinished capriccio showing an elevation of a triumphal arch with single opening, flanked by an aedicular niche with statue, relief sculpture above and inscription panels in attic.

Aspect

Elevationverso perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 162; inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Cortinella. 5 pauliss the Canno [?]

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey wash157 x 204

Hand

Robert Adam (attributed to)

Verso

Unfinished pen capriccio showing a tree beside a ruined tomb on a woody cliff in a narrow valley. This landscape sketch is similar to those on Adam vol.55/51 verso, and it is similar to the landscape section in volume 54 (see Adam vol.54/Series 5/18).

Notes

The triumphal arch is possibly a variation of the more sketchy composition of an arch in Adam vol.55/136; it is a compendium of several Roman arches, especially that of Titus in the Forum. Another example may be found on the verso of Adam vol.55/166. In the style of draughtsmanship, this drawing, like Adam vol.55/161, belongs with the group of exercises in grey wash in Adam vol.55/176-78.

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.

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