[6] Imaginative reconstruction drawing of a variant design made by J.M.Gandy, 1798-1800

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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
    - Copies of a design for an unidentified mausoleum on an X-plan, 1779-1780, with perspective by J.M.Gandy of a variant design, 1798-1800 (6)

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Reference number

SM volume 60/182

Purpose

[6] Imaginative reconstruction drawing of a variant design made by J.M.Gandy, 1798-1800

Aspect

Preliminary perspective of a single storey, domed mausoleum on an X-plan with stepped terrace and 4 small detached pyramids

Inscribed

(pen by G. Bailey, curator 1837-60) Sketch of a Design for A Mausoleum

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, sepia washes, watercolour technique within sepia wash border on laid paper (339 x 564)

Hand

J.M.Gandy (1771-1843)

Notes

The perspective is unfinished with pencil setting-up lines that have not been erased. The plan corresponds with SM volume 66/35 and SM volume 62/78, that is, an X-plan building set on a stepped circular terrace on a flat square one, but with pyramids at each of the four outer corners instead of the large circular pedestals bearing trophies as shown in the previous drawings. These pedestals are now on the roof of each of the four pavilions. The dome has a taller drum and profile instead of the stepped, shallow one of 62/79 and SM volume 60/204. Presumably Soane suggested the revisions to Gandy who then drew them out.

Compared with the placid horizontality of the previous perspective with its wooded background, here the proportions of the building have been made more vertical so that the openings appear to be twice as high as before; the effect (with a background of mountains) is austere and striking. Gandy was in Soane's office from 1798 to 1800 and even in this rough drawing, one can see why his realisation of these early designs was so appealing to Soane.

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).