• Undated, probably 1760 - 63

Pencil, pen, watercolour 556 x 200, horizontal central foldline

Giuseppe Manocchi (attributed to)

This is a variant of Adam vol.26/4 and 6 and is based on the decoration of pilaster 4 of the Raphael logge in the Vatican. The side border is unlike both that of the Ottaviani print (see below) and in Adam vol.26/4. However, the size and style of the drawing clearly makes it part of the Manocchi set, Adam vol.26/3- 12), although it is not numbered as such. There is a version of this drawing, also attributed to Manocchi, showing the top three medallions and decorations to one side in the Clérisseau collection in the Hermitage, St Petersburg (see Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820) Dessins du musée de l'Ermitage Saint-Petersbourg, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1995, p.103, pl.15). Like Nicolas-Francoise-David Lhuiller (d.1793), Manocchi was connected with Clérisseau and there are several Manocchi copies in the Hermitage.
The decoration of the Vatican logge appeared as engravings between 1772 - 1777 in three parts: Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1772), Seconda Parte delle Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1776) and Terza ed Ultima Parte delle Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1777). Work on the project of recording was begun in 1760 and was more or less completed by 1768. The principal artists involved were the painter Gaetano Savorelli (d.1791) and the architect Pietro Camporesi (1726-81), and the engraver was Giovanni Ottaviani (1735-1808). The third volume was engraved by Giovanni Volpato (1733-1803), after drawings by Ludovico Tesio (1731-82).
The numerous drawings that Manocchi made of the Vatican decoration at this time would suggest that he was the draughtsman of the series Adam vol.26/3-12, especially in view of James Adam's reference to 'My arabesque' of 1763. There is another incomplete set of 12 logge drawings in Sir John Soane's Museum Soane volume SM 130, also in Manocchi's hand, which may too have had an Adam provenance. According to Fuhring, there are Manocchi drawings for the Raphael logge in the Berlin Kunstbibliothek that may be c.1755 (see P. Fuhring, Design into Art, Drawings for Architecture and Ornament, 2 vols., London, 1989, I, pp.59-60). There are also several unfinished logge compositions in album four of the Hardwick drawings in the RIBA (see 4.12-14, 21). These have a lettered colour key and some have the note 'non, Fecci due pichole / none fatto', which indicates their provisional role. There were at least two sets of logge prints in the Adam sales, lot 58 in the first day of the 1818 sale and lot 124 in the first day of the 1821 sale (see A. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 2 vols., London, 1922, II, pp.330, 335).

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