Inscribed
Inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Cascada di Terni; and in ink 149.
Signed and dated
- Undated, possibly September 1755.
Medium and dimensions
Black chalk, brown and grey washes, with lead white, partly oxcidised, on grey paper478 x 328
Hand
Unidentified eighteenth-century artist
Verso
White chalk architectural diagrams.
Notes
In September 1755 Robert Adam wrote that he and Charles-Louis Clérisseau planned to '... go first to Caprarola, from that to Narni and Terni ...' (J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.180). This drawing may have been made at that time although the hand is neither that of Adam nor Clérisseau, but it is likely to be one of their party. There is a similar drawing by Robert Adam from virtually the same viewpoint in the Blair Adam collection (BA 284), and a drawing from a different viewpoint by Clérisseau (see T. McCormick, Charles-Louis Clérisseau and the Genesis of Neo-Classicism, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1990, p.31). The view can also be compared with Robert Adam's drawing of the Tivoli waterfall in Adam vol.57/75 and its continuation in the Clerk Collection, Scotland (Clerk 115).
Literature
A. A. Tait, 'An Adam Volume in Sir John Soane's Museum' in The Burlington Magazine, no.1016, vol. 129, November 1987, p.743
Level
Drawing
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