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  • image Adam vol.7/175
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Reference number

Adam vol.7/175

Purpose

Unfinished plan showing two oval courts, a theatre at one end connected to a chapel by a long rectangular gallery, off which is a columned anteroom.

Aspect

Plan

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink probably in Robert Adam's hand chapd / cryptoporticus or Gallery / Theatre / Atrium, Dining/ room / Gallery / vestibulum / A chamber / Drawing verso Inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Ds of Marcellus's Theatre with dimensions in French ft beside pen diagram

Signed and dated

  • Undated

Medium and dimensions

Pen 187 x 235

Hand

Robert Adam (attributed to)

Verso

The note here probably refers to the plans for the theatre of Marcellus in an edition of A.-B. Desgodetz's Édifices antiques de Rome (first published Paris, 1682), which was in the Adam library (see D. Watkin, ed. Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons, vol. 4, Architects, London, 1972, p.161).

Watermark

Shield with letter CF

Notes

The theatre design here seems little related to the classical, and the various rooms, such as 'chapel' and 'drawing room' suggest this is a contemporary palace design, possibly for Richmond, Surrey (see A. A. Tait, Robert Adam: drawings and imagination, Cambridge, 1993, p.53-56). The plan may also be related to the theatre shown in Adam vol.7/170 and 171, and the sketch plan in Adam vol.7/176. The ink inscriptions on the drawing are probably in Robert Adam's hand.

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).