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Italy: Rome: Pyramid of Cestius. View of the Pyramid of Cestius, looking along the Aurelian walls to the outer side of the Porta Ostiense (now the Porta San Paolo).
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Reference number
Adam vol.57/54
Purpose
Italy: Rome: Pyramid of Cestius. View of the Pyramid of Cestius, looking along the Aurelian walls to the outer side of the Porta Ostiense (now the Porta San Paolo).
Aspect
Perspective
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink 54
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1755 or 1756.
Medium and dimensions
Pen, pencil, grey washes175 x 308
Hand
Robert Adam
Notes
This is perhaps one of the most conventional of Robert Adam's Roman views in this section of Adam vol.57, and it may be compared with Piranesi's etching (Le Antichità Romane, vol.II, pl.XL). There are three other related views by Adam in the Clerk Collection, Scotland: one close to the walls looking at the pyramid (Clerk 101), a second from the other direction of the pyramid and walls looking to the Tiber (Clerk 54), and a third of the city-side of the Porta Ostiense (Clerk 55). The use of castellated forms in such a classical context was something that Adam explored in his later picturesque designs, although, apart from this element, the perspective here is a dull and empty one.
Literature
'Bob the Roman' Heroic Antiquity & the Architecture of Robert Adam, Catalogue of an exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum, 2003, cat.57In Pursuit of Antiquity, Drawings by the Giants of British Neo-Classicism, Catalogue of an exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum, 2008, cat.21
Level
Drawing
Exhibition history
'Bob the Roman': Heroic Antiquity and the Architecture of Robert Adam, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 27 June - 27 September 2003; New York School of Interior Design Gallery, 29 September - 4 December 2004
In Pursuit of Antiquity: Drawings by the Giants of British Neo-Classicism, Sir John Soane's Museum, 1 February - 1 June 2008; Tchoban Foundation Museum für Architekturzeichnung, Berlin, 3 October 2015 - 14 February 2016
In Pursuit of Antiquity: Drawings by the Giants of British Neo-Classicism, Sir John Soane's Museum, 1 February - 1 June 2008; Tchoban Foundation Museum für Architekturzeichnung, Berlin, 3 October 2015 - 14 February 2016
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