Scale
bar scale of English and french feet (see below for note)
Inscribed
as above
Medium and dimensions
Pen, pencil, pricked for transfer, traces of red sealing wax at corners on laid paper (398 x 545)
Hand
Soane
Notes
Soane drew a single scale bar labelled English and french and reading 10, 20 and 40 (sic). The bar scale has a dotted vertical line followed by a single sub-division of about 1/8 of an inch then followed by 2 inches subdivided by 10. A further dotted vertical is labelled 'English'. Thus, ten English feet are shown as slightly larger than ten French feet. No dimensions are given. Presumably this is the Teatro Regio built in 1738-40 by Benedetto Alfieri (1700-67) for Carlo Emanuele II, King of Savoy. When George Wightwick (1802-72) made a sketch section of the roof on his visit to Italy of 1825-7 (RIBA Drawings Collection PB429/12(1-2), the truss that he drew differed from that of Soane's time. In 1838, Pelagio Pelagi introduced a series of modifications to the theatre's structures. Altered again in the early 20th century, the Theatre was severely damaged by fire in 1936 and subsequently bombed in World War II; It was rebuilt to the design of Carlo Mollino, 1966-63. (information from Teatro Regio website)
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).
