[4] Rough designs, 1778

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Soane's architectural education: Royal Academy and Italy including measured drawings: 1770-1780
  - Soane's architectural education including theoretical designs made for the Royal Academy Schools and for exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1770-80, and in Italy, 1778-80
    - Preliminary designs, some by George Dance, final design exhibited at the Royal Academy, record drawing, and perspectives by J.M.Gandy and George Bailey, for a British Senate House 1778-1779 and later (16)

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Reference number

SM volume 42/162 recto and verso

Purpose

[4] Rough designs, 1778

Aspect

Rough plan basically consisting of a stretched ellipse with a three-quarter circular chamber at one end, a cross axis marked by slightly projecting wings, and with several rooms arranged along each side; and very rough (pencil) studies of plan forms including a Greek cross enclosing a circular compartment with four apses; and a circular compartment with several domes or lanterns; (verso) further very rough studies of plan forms: an elliptical courtyard building with a double entrance marked In twice; rectangular courtyard building with Triumphal Arch marked; and a T-plan with several compartments including a circular one with 8 lanterns related to plans on the recto

Inscribed

(recto) Hall (verso) as above and near Capua on the road / bad from - - - - c (illegible) Capua / to Caserta

Signed and dated

datable to c. 29 December 1778

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil, (verso) pencil, on laid secretary paper with three fold marks (319 x 418)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

(partly illegible) D'Annonay and crown with trefoils (French made)

Notes

The rough plans reveal Soane rapidly sketching out successive ideas that bring him closer to the eventual solution. Soane's Italian notebook, 1778-9 (volume 164, f.14) shows that he was, for example, in Capua and Caserta, 20 miles north of Naples on 29 December 1778.

Level

Drawing

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).