Copy of a design on a plan measuring 90 x 65 feet

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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
    - Copy of a design for a large villa, inscribed Rome, 11 November 1779

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Reference number

SM 45/1/15

Purpose

Copy of a design on a plan measuring 90 x 65 feet

Aspect

Plan of the Bedchamber Story and plan of the Hall, or Principal Story (inscribed in another hand?)

Scale

bar scale in English feet of 1/13 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

as above, Front extends 90 feet / Flank ...... 65 feet, The Cornice to this Part as at Balbec, rooms labelled: (ground floor) Breakfasting / Parlor, Library, Vestibule, Eating Parlor, Drawing Room, Saloon / or / Music Room, (first floor) Upper part of Saloon, Corridor lighted by a Skylight, 5 bedrooms, 2 water closets and 2 dressing rooms are indicated, North, South, East and West and dimensions given

Signed and dated

Rome, Nov^r 11^th1779

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen and sepia wash, partly pricked for transfer within double ruled border on laid paper with old patch (708 x 509)

Hand

Soane, some inscriptions by another hand ?

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche with GR below and J Whatman

Notes

This drawing appears to be a copy of drawing made in Rome on 11 November 1779. It is partly pricked through for transfer and has a rather mechanical look to it. The room labels appear to be by Soane, the larger inscriptions possibly by another hand.

Elevations, if made, have not survived. The plan is an enlarged re-working of Soane's published design for a 'Hunting Casine' (Designs in architecture, 1778, plate xxiv) with its circular, domed principal room that here is fronted by four columns set on the curve, and with the cornice 'as at Balbec'. Details, no doubt, taken from R.Wood and J.Dawkins, The Ruins of Balbec, 1757, of which Soane owned two copies (date of acquisition not known).

See also: Alternative designs for a (hunting) casino, c. 1780.

Jill Lever, September 2005

Literature

P. du Prey, John Soane's architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.267-8

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).