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  • image Adam, vol.57/48
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Reference number

Adam, vol.57/48

Purpose

Italy: Rome: ? Acqua Julia. View of the ruins of five arches of a Roman aqueduct, possibly the Acqua Julia, in a landscape setting. In the foreground are irregular domestic buildings.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 48

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 or 1756.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey washes; pencil framing line on added bottom strip184 x 285

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

This drawing and Adam vol.57/49 are among the numerous drawings that Robert Adam made of the Roman aqueducts - Marcia, Claudia, Felice. His interest was perhaps especially fired by Piranesi, who was at work in the 1750s on his Le Rovine del Castello dell'Acqua Giulia, 1761. Around this time, Adam also acquired his manuscript of Carlo Fontana's Utilissimo Trattato dell'Acque Correnti, 1696, which John Soane later bought in the Adam sale of 1818 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam, Christie's, London 21 & 22 May 1818). It is also possible that this is a view of the ruins on the Palatine (see R. Keaveney, Views of Rome, London, 1988, pl.17).

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).