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Capriccio showing a square two-storey building with a Pantheon-style dome on a drum and two entrances on steps with relief sculpture above. Across a single-span bridge is a three-bay pavilion, with trees and a lake in the landscape.
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Reference number
Adam vol.56/54
Purpose
Capriccio showing a square two-storey building with a Pantheon-style dome on a drum and two entrances on steps with relief sculpture above. Across a single-span bridge is a three-bay pavilion, with trees and a lake in the landscape.
Aspect
Perspective
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink 94; in red ink on backing sheet 54
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably c.1756
Medium and dimensions
Pencil and pen; grey wash on grey washed paper273 x 419, mounted on backing sheet 353 x 497
Hand
Robert Adam
Notes
The drawings in Adam vol.56/49-54 are part of a set of landscape compositions by Robert Adam. They are all of a similar size, on grey washed paper and in the style of Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (1716-1803), but sources of the compositions may differ. It is likely that these drawings were part of a larger group since each has a number between 83 and 94, inscribed in the eighteenth century. They were probably made in Rome in c.1756; Robert Adam wrote in November of that year that he had been working on such 'kind of ... sketches...' and had '... already made out a dozen different views as unlike one another as I could ...' (J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.363). This set of drawings may be compared with the landscape compositions in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (for example 1954-14) (see A. A. Tait, Robert Adam: drawings and imagination, Cambridge, 1993, pp.20-23).The square building with a dome is similar to that found in several compositions in Adam volume 55; on the verso of 55/51 is a small sketch of such a building in a landscape with a waterfall, and a similar pavilion in a landscape setting is found in Adam vol.56/114. Stillman particularly contrasts this drawing and that in Adam vol.56/41 'with his pre-Italian drawings of the same sort' (see D. Stillman, 'Robert Adam's Grand Tour', Antiques vol.83, June 1963, p.673).
Literature
Rep. D. Stillman, 'Robert Adam's Grand Tour', Antiques vol.83, June 1963, p.672
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