Inscribed
Inscribed on both album leaf and drawing in red ink 29
Signed and dated
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
Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural,
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