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Reference number

Adam vol.57/66

Purpose

View or capriccio of a small ruined tower with niche above a series of ruined vaults on the side of a hill, possibly taken on the Palatine, Rome. In the background is a domed church.

Aspect

Perspective verso, elevation/detail
  • image Adam vol.57/66

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 66

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 or 1756.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, grey and brown washes128 x 148

Hand

Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (attributed to)verso, Robert Adam (attributed to)

Verso

Study in black chalk showing three composite capitals.

Notes

The smooth and less contrived style of drawing here would suggest this is by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand rather than Robert Adam or Charles-Louis Clérisseau, although the capitals on the verso are likely to be by Adam. The view possibly depicts the arcaded substructures in the Palace of Septimus Severus on the south-east side of the Palatine, or the Domus Tiberiana on the bridged Nova Via, although the composition suggests it may be a capriccio (see Adam vol.57/68).

Level

Drawing

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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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