Record drawings of two relief panels and two covered vases. The top panel or frieze shows sacrificial devices, bucrania, paterae, sacred slaughter knives, an urn and a vessel; the lower panel or frieze shows seven objects. Below this, the covered vase on the left has an inscription panel and swags, that on the right has two reclining figures.

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You are here: CollectionsOnline / Record drawings of two relief panels and two covered vases. The top panel or frieze shows sacrificial devices, bucrania, paterae, sacred slaughter knives, an urn and a vessel; the lower panel or frieze shows seven objects. Below this, the covered vase on the left has an inscription panel and swags, that on the right has two reclining figures.

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Robert and James Adam travel drawings
- Adam Volume 26

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Reference number

Adam vol.26/85

Purpose

Record drawings of two relief panels and two covered vases. The top panel or frieze shows sacrificial devices, bucrania, paterae, sacred slaughter knives, an urn and a vessel; the lower panel or frieze shows seven objects. Below this, the covered vase on the left has an inscription panel and swags, that on the right has two reclining figures.

Aspect

Elevations, details

Signed and dated

Undated, probably 1760 - 63

Medium and dimensions

Black chalk 430 x 305

Hand

Nicolas-François-David Lhuiller (attributed to)

Watermark

coat of arms

Notes

The two friezes can be compared with that from the Temple of Jupiter Tonans (Vespasian), which shows similar implements of sacrifice and ox skulls (see E. Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, London, 1968, vol.II, p.50; see also P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, Oxford, 1986, pp.225-6; for the lower panel, see G.L. Taylor & E. Cresy, The Architectural Antiquities of Rome, 2 vols., London, 1821, vol.II, p.18). There is also a similar panel in the Arcus Argentariorum (see Nash, op.cit., vol.I, p.89) and in Adam vol.26/70.
The two vases are possibly companions to those in Adam vol.26/84 and are probably cinerary urns. They may be compared with the elaborate set of vases attributed to Giuseppe Manocchi (1731-82) of c.1765/66 in Adam volume 19/90-97, and others in Adam vol.25/142-155. There are other, more fantastic, compositions in Robert Adam's Designs for Vases and Foliage, London, 1821 (see pls.2-10).

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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