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Italy: Rome: Santa Constanza. View of the circular church of Santa Costanza on the Via Nomentana, beside two trees. On one side is part of a curved wall and other ruined walls.
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Reference number
Adam vol.57/52
Purpose
Italy: Rome: Santa Constanza. View of the circular church of Santa Costanza on the Via Nomentana, beside two trees. On one side is part of a curved wall and other ruined walls.
Aspect
Perspective
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink 52
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1756.
Medium and dimensions
Pen, grey and brown washes190 x 312
Hand
Robert Adam
Watermark
coat of arms
Notes
Santa Costanze was originally a mausoleum and the view that Robert Adam has chosen shows remains of the graveyard structures dating from the Constantine period. There is another view of the building by Adam in the Clerk Collection, Scotland (Clerk 93), which shows the church in considerable detail but from the other side. According to Fleming, his '... charming and painstaking sketches', which included those of Santa Costanza, were probably made in the summer of 1756 (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.213). There is a superior version of this composition, identical in size, by Charles-Louis Clérisseau in The Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia (2395).Adam's drawings of the exterior of what is likely to be the adjoining church of Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura (Adam vol.57/63 and 57/64) were probably made at the same time as the current view.
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