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  • image Adam vol.26/31
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Reference number

Adam vol.26/31

Purpose

Possibly unfinished record drawings for wall decoration showing two panels, one above the other. At the top is part of a rectangular panel with statues in niches and grotesque decoration, forming a border to a central panel. Below is a vault-shaped panel with a central figure on a plinth flanked by grotesque work and lions.

Aspect

Elevations

Signed and dated

  • Undated, possibly 1765 - 67

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil 402 x 274

Hand

Giuseppe Manocchi (attributed to)

Watermark

fleur de lys within double circle

Notes

The two compositions on this sheet are typical of Roman classical decoration, such as that in the Domus Aurea, and the niche form may be compared with the work by Giovanni da Udine(1487-1564) at the Villa Madama, Rome, which was engraved by Giovanni Ottaviani (1735-1808) (see G. B. Pezzini, Raphael Invenit: Stampe da Raffaello nelle Collezioni dell'Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome, 1985, pp.645-9). The drawings are probably unfinished; panels are empty and it may well have been the intention for the drawing to have bodycolour, as in Adam vol.26/32.
There is a great similarity to the Manocchi drawings in the RIBA collection and so this might date from about 1765 - 7 when he was in London.

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).