Record drawings of two small rectangular panels and two urns. The panel at the top has two winged figures pulling a lion's mane with scrolling foliage on either side; the panel below this has a winged putto pouring liquid onto the raised paw of a winged lion. Below this, on the left is a covered vase with lion handles, on the right an open vase with swag decoration.

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You are here: CollectionsOnline / Record drawings of two small rectangular panels and two urns. The panel at the top has two winged figures pulling a lion's mane with scrolling foliage on either side; the panel below this has a winged putto pouring liquid onto the raised paw of a winged lion. Below this, on the left is a covered vase with lion handles, on the right an open vase with swag decoration.

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Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam Volume 26

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Reference number

Adam vol.26/84

Purpose

Record drawings of two small rectangular panels and two urns. The panel at the top has two winged figures pulling a lion's mane with scrolling foliage on either side; the panel below this has a winged putto pouring liquid onto the raised paw of a winged lion. Below this, on the left is a covered vase with lion handles, on the right an open vase with swag decoration.

Aspect

Elevations, details

Signed and dated

Undated, probably 1760 - 63

Medium and dimensions

Black chalk 436 x 312

Hand

Nicolas-François-David Lhuiller (attributed to)

Watermark

coat of arms [part]

Notes

There is a version of the top relief panel by a similar hand in Sir John Soane's Museum (see SM 129/84). The lower of the two relief panels is a version of the frieze from Trajan's Forum, Rome shown in Adam vol.26/53, which was illustrated by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) as in the Aldobrandini gardens (see G. B. Piranesi, Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcophagi, etc., Rome, 1778, pl.62).
The two vases, and the two in Adam vol.26/85, are possibly copies of similar ones in Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820)'s Portfolio C, now in the Hermitage, which contained 'une collection considérable de vases et de candelabres, dont la plus grande partie sont dessinés d'après l'antique' ('a considerable collection of vases and candelabras, of which the largest part were drawn after the antique'); of these, 219 were vases (see Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820) Dessins du musée de l'Ermitage Saint-Petersbourg, catalogue of exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1995, p.92). The covered vase is probably a cinerary urn (see Adam vol.26/85); there is a print of it by Piranesi in Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcophagi, etc., noted as a 'Vasi Cinerario di marmo' from the the Villa Casali near San Stefano Rotondo. There is a set of vase compositions attributed to Giuseppe Manocchi (1731-82) of c.1766 in Adam vol.19/90-97. In Adam volume 52 there is also a pen drawing of a frieze of putti and vases in relief, on which is noted in a contemporary hand 'Fregio dal vaso in Grande trovato in una vigna 3 miglia fuori di Roma nel anno 1764'. (see Adam vol.52/132). It is probably a copy of similar drawings to those shown here.

Level

Drawing

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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.

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