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  • image Adam vol.56/67
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/67

Purpose

Capriccio showing a ruined arch with the remains of an Ionic portico on one side and a statue on the other; in the foreground are architectural fragments.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 10 and in red ink 67

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756 or 1757.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen and grey wash (98 x 129; laid onto backing sheet 101 x 134)

Hand

Robert Adam (1728-1792), attributed to

Notes

Although the composition here is rectangular rather than within a circle, it is in the same spirit as the circular drawing in Adam vol.56/66 and others in the same series, and despite being in pen and wash rather than pen and watercolour, its numbering as 10 also suggests it is part of that series. There is a variation of the ruined arch and portico, with stronger figure drawing, in Adam vol.56/79, which is described by John Fleming as drawn 'in the manner of Pannini, probably by Robert Adam' (see Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), pl.69). Another similar composition of an arch, also using wash, is in Adam vol.56/123.

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

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).