• Undated, probably 1761 - 1763

Pen, brown wash on buff washed paper 196 x 566

Unidentified eighteenth-century artist

There are a number of drawings of this sort of subject in Adam vol.26/112-117 that are all probably after the undercut reliefs from the pillars in the Uffizi in Florence (see also Adam vol.26/88). There were two pillars each with four relief panels. The columns were removed from Rome to Florence in 1588 and in the eighteenth century were set up at the entrance to the Uffizi Gallery (see P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, Oxford, 1986, p.206). In February 1761 James Adam admired the Palazzo Vecchio of the Uffizi and wrote in his journal: 'Palazzo Vecchio, where there are in the Cortile some columns wrought in the antique style in the most superb manner. The apartments of the palace are full of grotesque ornaments, but of a kind superior to any I ever saw, which made me form the project of employing a young painter to copy them in my absence' (see James Adam, The Library of the Fine Arts, II, 1831, p.175).
There are similar compositions in Adam volume 19 (see particularly Adam vol.19/101-2). The drawings are probably tracings on very fine oiled paper, now rearranged.

Drawing

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