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  • image Adam vol.26/62
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Reference number

Adam vol.26/62

Purpose

Record drawings of a side table with a concave base and top, which is supported by two (of possibly three) griffins. Beside this is a funerary altar with a rectangular inscription panel flanked by two rams' heads, with a swag between the two; below the inscription panel is a small winged figure and below this at the corners are two crouching eagles.

Aspect

Perspectives

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand (below side table) Capitol Lettered on the funerary altar inscription panel D M / IULIA FLE / PEREGRINA / OPTIME MIRITA [?]

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1760 - 63

Medium and dimensions

Black chalk 274 x 427, central vertical foldline

Hand

Nicolas-François-David Lhuiller (attributed to)

Watermark

coat of arms

Notes

The annotation under the side table 'Capitol' denotes the Capitoline Museum in Rome. The traditional altar form shown is similar to that in Adam vol.26/63 and they may both be studies of the two principal faces. The drawing is probably derived from similar forms shown in J. J. Boissard, Antiquitatum Romanorum, Frankfurt, 1598. Bernard de Montfauçon (1655-1741) used these in his section on 'Urnes Sépulcrales' (see L'Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, Paris, 1719, 10 vols., vol.5 part 1). A similar perspective drawing, but from a higher viewpoint and in pen and grey wash, is amongst the Charles-Louis Clérisseau drawings in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia (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.96, pl.8). There are versions of both the table and the altar in a similar hand in the Sir John Soane's Museum (see SM 129/135 and 140). The table may be compared with that from Herculaneum, which Robert Adam drew during his Naples tour of 1755 (see Adam vol.57/46), and it is shown as the base for a marble vase in G. B. Piranesi, Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcophagi, etc., Rome, 1778, pl.36. It is anotated there that the 'Tripode che si conserva nel Museo Capitolino', where it was was when drawn by Giovanni Battista Montano (1545 - 1621) in the early seventeenth century (see L. Fairbairn, Italian Renaissance Drawings from the Collection of Sir John Soane's Museum, 2 volumes, London, 1998, II, p.728). The classical inscription panel shows four lines of funerary text in Latin.

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

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).