[2] Rome: Argentina Theatre: copy of 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: Trusses for roofs, February 1780 (11 on 6 sheets)

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Reference number

SM 45/6/1 recto

Purpose

[2] Rome: Argentina Theatre: copy of measured drawing

Aspect

Half cross section of roof truss, detail of scarfed tie beam, and thumbnail plan of theatre measuring 60:00 by 51:4 (and labelled 26 rows of Seats, Orch.), * Beams of Abete (fir) / All the rest of Castagno (chestnut)

Scale

bar scale of English feet - 1/3 in to 1 ft (approximately)

Inscribed

as above, Teatro Argentina and dimensions given

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, some hatching, some pricking for transfer, traces of red sealing wax at corners on laid paper (400 x 550)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

fleur-de-lis in within oval frame with CB above (Heawood 1598 Rome 1762)

Notes

The divisions of the bar scale that is inscribed 'English feet' suggest a scale of approximately 1/3 inch to 1 foot, but the dimensions do not tally with that scale. Comparison with a drawing of the same subject by C.H.Tatham shows the same structure but with variations as to the disposition of metal hangers, ties and straps (RIBA Drawings Collection SC110/11(5)

Dating from 1730, the Teatro Argentina was the most important theatre in Rome in the 18th century. There is a plan by Thomas Hardwick in the RIBA Drawings Collection (SB61/4) of the Theatre which still exists.

Literature

P.du Prey, (J.Lever editor), Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, volume G-K, 1973, p.92³; P.du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, p.288
P.du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp.156-8

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).