Explore Collections
You are here:
CollectionsOnline
/
Italy: Rome, Colonna garden. Record drawing of a large fragment of sculpture of the lower part of a male torso transmogrified into acanthus foliage; it is shown in a naturalistic setting.
Browse
Reference number
Adam vol.26/52
Purpose
Italy: Rome, Colonna garden. Record drawing of a large fragment of sculpture of the lower part of a male torso transmogrified into acanthus foliage; it is shown in a naturalistic setting.
Aspect
Detail
Inscribed
Inscribed in a contemporary hand Nero's frontispiece and in a different hand Colonna Garden - fragment of the Temple of the Sun / Rome.; and dimensions 16:3" long and 9:6 high.
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1760 - 63
Medium and dimensions
Black chalk
279 x 467
Hand
Nicolas-François-David Lhuiller (attributed to)
Notes
There is another study of the decorative sculpture in the Colonna gardens in Adam vol.26/69, and views of the gardens themselves are found in Adam volume 57 (see Adam vol.57/100 and 115). The rear wall of the temple (Serapis) was known in the eighteenth century as the 'Frontispizio di Nerone', and it was illustrated in E. Duperac, Vestigi dell'Antichità di Roma (Rome, 1575), before its destruction in 1630. The sculpture shown here is from that wall. The drawing is annotated with dimensions in feet and inches, and this and the other 'Colonna' inscription may be by James Adam's draughtsman, George Richardson (d.1813) (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, pp.368-9).
Level
Drawing
Exhibition history
The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009
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