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  • image Adam vol.56/104
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/104

Purpose

Capriccio showing a curved arcade of columns, supporting a sculptural frieze, in front of which is a sarcophagus on a plinth with an inscribed tablet. In the foreground are Ionic and Corinthian capitals and two diminutive figures.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 63; and in red ink 104.

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably between 1755 and 1757.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, watercolour360 x 306, top 2 corners trimmed diagonally; damage caused by 6 glue spots during removal from previous location

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

This composition of a sarcophagus against a curving wall may be compared with Adam vol.56/126, attributed to Charles-Louis Clérisseau. A possible source for this drawing is Robert Adam's vigorous and free pen drawing in Adam vol.55/99, which shows a similar curved building with a sarcophagus in the foreground. It may also be compared with similar compositions by Clérisseau and by Charles Natoire (see McCormick Charles-Louis Clérisseau and the Genesis of Neo-Classicism (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1990), p.134, pl.112 by Clérisseau and pl.113 by Natoire).

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).