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View into The Forum in Rome, showing figures beside a ruined and coffered building with in the distance the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.
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Reference number
Adam vol.56/152
Purpose
View into The Forum in Rome, showing figures beside a ruined and coffered building with in the distance the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.
Aspect
Perspective
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink on right-hand border of drawing 16; in red ink on album leaf 152. and on drawing 152
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1756.
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, pen, black chalk, watercolour; ink framing line beyond which is blue painted border255 x 376, top and bottom borders composed of strips of paper
Hand
Jean-Baptiste Lallemand
Notes
This drawing is one of a set of six Roman views (Adam vol.56/149-154) by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (1716-1803), all of which have contemporaneous painted borders and have central folds, and most of which are signed. There were several similar sets in the Adam sales of 1818 and 1821 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam, Christie's, London, 21 & 22 May 1818 and Christie's London Catalogue of the Effects of Robert Adam Esq. Dec. 9 July 1821 & following days). Lot 32 of the second day sale of 1818 was described as 'Six elegant drawings in India ink by L'Alma, of Italian Garden scenery', and lot 29 contained several of Lallemand's landscapes, all of which were bought by John Soane (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 2 vols. (London, 1922), II, p.331). The set was probably made in 1756 for Robert Adam, at the time when he described himself as '... applying myself to these kind of sketches and have already made out a dozen of different views as unlike one another as I could ...' (Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), p.363). This view shows the three columns and entablature of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the bottom left; the foreground may be the Viscus Tuscus, the street that led from the Circus Maximus to The Forum. This drawing can be compared with the view of the Temple by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1728-1778) in Le Antichitá Romane (1756) pl.xxxiii, fig.1. The building with remains of elaborate coffering is perhaps part of the Palatine complex, shown as the hall to the Casa di Caligola in Piranesi's print. There is a larger view of the scene, possibly by Robert Adam, in the Clerk Collection, Scotland (Clerk 28).
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