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  • image Adam vol.56/121
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/121

Purpose

Capriccio showing the basement of a ruined circular building, with column bases above a cornice. In the background are buildings, and in the foreground is a sarcophagus re-used as the basin of a fountain.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 81; in red ink 121

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756 or 1757.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, wash, watercolour, white oxidised; 3 ink framing lines, with wash outside outer circledrawing within a circle of 184 dia., sheet size 201 x 201, all 4 corners trimmed diagonally

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

This drawing may have been inspired by mausolea such as the Roman Tomb of the Plautii or that of Cecilia Metella, both well known to Robert Adam, and found in drawings by Adam and Charles-Louis Clérisseau in Adam volume 57 (see Adam vol.57/130 and 134). The landscape with buildings and an arch, possibly based on the Arch of Titus in the distance, can also be seen in other drawings in the Roman section of volume 57 (see Adam vol.57/51).

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009

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).