Explore Collections
You are here:
CollectionsOnline
/
Academic study for the plan of a circular building having a circular central court with niches and columns, two staircases and a projecting three-bay portico on steps. In the bottom right of the sheet is part of a small circular plan.
Browse
Reference number
Adam vol.9/3
Purpose
Academic study for the plan of a circular building having a circular central court with niches and columns, two staircases and a projecting three-bay portico on steps. In the bottom right of the sheet is part of a small circular plan.
Aspect
Plan
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink on drawing 3
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1755 - 56.
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, pen130 x 120, bottom corners torn
Hand
Robert Adam
Notes
This plan is a more complicated version of that shown in Adam vol.9/2, with a reworking of two of the oval staircase spaces unresolved. As an academic exercise, it probably belongs with Adam vol.9/25 and 26. Among the drawings executed after 1758, in Adam vol.9/220 there is a more developed, domestic version of this scheme, where the central court has become an antechamber 20 feet in diameter. Another scheme in Adam vol.9/186 that is dated 1760 and signed by Robert Adam, probably gives the date for all such studies.
Literature
Rep. A. A. Tait, Robert Adam: drawings and imagination, Cambridge, 1993, p.27, fig.24.
Level
Drawing
Exhibition history
'Bob the Roman': Heroic Antiquity and the Architecture of Robert Adam, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 27 June - 27 September 2003; New York School of Interior Design Gallery, 29 September - 4 December 2004
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