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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Italy: Rome, the Vatican. Record drawing for the decoration of a pilaster showing four relief panels surrounded by grotesque decoration and two putti at the base, above connected panels in the form of an inverted 'T'. On one side is a border of foliage and rosettes.
  • image Adam vol.26/192
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Reference number

Adam vol.26/192

Purpose

Italy: Rome, the Vatican. Record drawing for the decoration of a pilaster showing four relief panels surrounded by grotesque decoration and two putti at the base, above connected panels in the form of an inverted 'T'. On one side is a border of foliage and rosettes.

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1760 - 1763

Medium and dimensions

Pen, watercolour, bodycolour 1240 x 354, four joined sheets

Hand

Giuseppe Manocchi (attributed to)

Notes

This drawing, together with those in Adam vol.26/186, 188, 191-201 is part of a group attributed to Giuseppe Manocchi (c.1731-82), showing decoration of the Vatican logge. The border to this panel would suggest it is one of the principal fourteen pilasters engraved by Ottaviani (see below). It does not, however, seem to correspond to any, although the rectangular panel of a reclining Neptune with wolf does correspond to that shown in Sir John Soane's Museum volume (see SM 130/12).
The decoration of the Vatican logge appeared as engravings between 1772 - 1777 in three parts: Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1772), Seconda Parte delle Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1776) and Terza ed Ultima Parte delle Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano (1777). Work on the project of recording was begun in 1760 and was more or less completed by 1768. The principal artists involved were the painter Gaetano Savorelli (d.1791) and the architect Pietro Camporesi (1726-81), and the engraver was Giovanni Ottaviani (1735-1808). The third volume was engraved by Giovanni Volpato (1733-1803), after drawings by Ludovico Tesio (1731-82).

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

'Bob the Roman': Heroic Antiquity and the Architecture of Robert Adam, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 27 June - 27 September 2003; New York School of Interior Design Gallery, 29 September - 4 December 2004

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).