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  • image SM volume 111/51
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Reference number

SM volume 111/51

Purpose

[2] Finished design for the altarpiece and reredos in the Chapel Royal, and for the panelling of the side walls of the Chapel.

Aspect

Side elevation and section, looking south

Scale

5 feet to 1 inch

Inscribed

In pencil at top left, 51

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but datable between December 1710 and January 1711

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink over graphite under drawing; on laid paper, inlaid in C19 Whatman 1811 paper mount; 195 x 150

Hand

William Dickinson

Watermark

IV

Notes

This side elevation corresponds to the front elevation at 111/66. The design proposal included the panelling and pedimented door surrounds on the flanking walls in the manner shown in Pyne's Residences in 1817-20 (Thurley 2003, fig. 202). The side view of the draped altar table shows a raised shelf at the back, 6 inches high and 18 inches deep. This shelf is drawn on plan but not in elevation in the preliminary design at the British Museum, but it is missing from the plan of the finished design at 1, above (111/66). The addition of the shelf in this side elevation resulted in the altar being enlarged from 3 feet to 3 feet 6 inches in depth. The shelf may have been intended for the display of candles and plate shown in the preliminary front elevation but not in the finished front elevation.

Literature

Not in Wren Society

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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