Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1765 - 67
Medium and dimensions
Pen, pencil
446 x 296
Hand
Giuseppe Manocchi (attributed to)
Notes
This drawing is similar to those by Giuseppe Manocchi (c.1731-82) in the RIBA Drawings Collection (see J. Lever, ed., Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, L-N, London, 1973, p.63). The RIBA drawings belong mostly to the period 1765-67 when Manocchi was in London. This drawing and those in Adam vol.26/29 and 32, may belong to this period, and as such are the counterparts of the Manocchi drawings in Adam volumes 15 and 16 of c.1766. According to McCormick, 'the original Clérisseaus from which they were copied are in the Hermitage'; he gives the source as a study of decorative details (see T. McCormick, Charles-Louis Clérisseau and the Genesis of Neo-Classicism, Cambridge Massachusetts and London, 1990, p.148, fig.128). McCormick also notes that this composition and Adam vol.26/95 are by an unknown draughtsman and are given no particular date. There are other copies in the same style in Adam vol.19/101-106. A note in Manocchi's hand in the fourth album, folio 15 of the Hardwick drawings in the RIBA lists at least some of Manocchi's assistants: 'Renatte pittore / Zanfano pittore / Gemi pittore / Veste pittore'.
Literature
Repr. T. McCormick, Charles-Louis Clérisseau and the Genesis of Neo-Classicism, Cambridge Massachusetts and London, 1990, p.150, fig.127.
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
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).
