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  • image Adam vol.26/190
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Reference number

Adam vol.26/190

Purpose

Design for a ceiling after the antique with a central circular panel showing a female figure; around this are alternating oval and rectangular panels linked by arabesques. A grotesque border of griffins and putti.

Aspect

Ceiling plan

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1760 - 1763

Medium and dimensions

Pen, watercolour, bodycolour; black border 411 x 407

Hand

Giuseppe Manocchi

Notes

This is one of a set of highly-finished, coloured drawings of a similar size (see Adam vol.26/168, 169, 179-182, 185, 187, 189 and 190) by Giuseppe Manocchi (1731-82), which parallel those found in Adam volumes 15 and 16. The central figure in this drawing is that found in Adam vol.26/180 and the general composition is similar to the other Manocchi ceiling designs or panels. There is a version of one quarter of this ceiling by Manocchi in the Hardwick albums in the RIBA (see J. Lever, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, L-N, London, 1973, p.93), which is inscribed 'Palazzo di Tito Franco Bartoli. 1721'. Bartoli's Le Pitture Antiche shows several ceiling designs from the Domus and Baths of Titus, Rome.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Paper Palaces: the Topham Collection as a source for British Neo-Classicism, The Verey Gallery, Eton College, 16 May - 1 November 2013

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).