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  • image Adam vol.56/29
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/29

Purpose

Study for a perspective of a rusticated building showing two three-bay elevations composed as a Venetian window with a central door with l'oeil de boeuf above opening onto a statue, and a shallow dome supported by rusticated columns as a belevedere. In the interior is a figure.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed on both album leaf and drawing in red ink 29

Signed and dated

  • Undated

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and pen; grey and brown washes232 x 269

Hand

Unidentified eighteenth-century artist or architect

Watermark

(part) IHS

Notes

This is probably a copy of a seventeenth-century print and shows a pavilion in the Mannerist style. The elevation for this perspective may be Adam vol.56/30; there is also a drawing in a similar style in Adam vol.56/172. The source could well be French, and copied from one of the architectural books in the Blair Adam library, which was particularly strong in that area; the shelf list of c.1785 records copies of works by Philibert de l'Orme, Pierre Le Muet, Jacques Androuet du Cerceau and Roland Fréart. There are several schemes in a French Mannerist style by Robert Adam in the Blair Adam collection (see Tait Robert Adam: drawings and imagination (Cambridge, 1993), p.8, and Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), p.91). The Adam sale of 1818 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam Christie's, London, 21 & 22 May 1818) also recorded a collection of sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century architectural prints as well as books (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam (London, 1922), vol.II, p.329-333).

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