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  • image SM volume 72/64

Reference number

SM volume 72/64

Purpose

[36] Design for the east end of the Accountants Office, 8 August 1804

Aspect

Elevation looking east and wall plan

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

(pencil, Soane) Large flower / Soffit of / Temple of / Mars, Aug 10: 1804 / begin oct stone at A, Aug 20 / these 4 capls / where placed, 1804 Aug 29 Ha--- (Hangs?) out for the / arch x

Signed and dated

  • as above, alterations to drawing dated August 1804

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Watermark

J Whatman 1801

Notes

This drawing, SM volume 72/73 and SM volume 72/74 show essentially the same design as SM volume 73/116 but with variations in decoration and, in SM volume 72/73, an alternative design for the pediment. The plans included in this drawing and SM volume 72/74 show the old wall of the previous Accountants' Office flush with the wall of the new Accountants Office (red wash). The doorway at the east end of the new Accountants' Office aligns with the doorway of the old office. The latter is turned into the Bill Office. The central and left doors in the elevations lead, respectively, to the Bill Office and a stairwell. The right door is blind.

A note on the drawing instructs the design to include flower paterae modelled on a soffit from the Temple of Mars (Ultor, Rome). The final design included paterae such as these. At his Royal Academy Lectures, Soane presented a drawing of the Temple of Mars (SM 19/8/5) as well as a detail of a soffit from the temple (SM 26/3/7). In Lecture II, he praised the temple's remaining columns, capitals, entablature and architrave, stating: 'There is such a taste in the composition and such correctness in the execution, as makes us lament the loss of any part of this exquisite work' (J. Soane, ed. A.T. Bolton, Lectures on architecture, 1929, p.37).

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.


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