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Academic study for the plan of a large building with circular and rectangular colonnaded courts in the centre, enclosed by another large courtyard with hemicycle at the top, incorporating a pavilion with portico.
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Reference number
Adam vol.9/59
Purpose
Academic study for the plan of a large building with circular and rectangular colonnaded courts in the centre, enclosed by another large courtyard with hemicycle at the top, incorporating a pavilion with portico.
Aspect
Planverso perspective, details
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink on drawing 59verso inscribed one line in ink and subsequently deleted
Signed and dated
- Undated, c1756
Medium and dimensions
Pen198 x 205
Hand
Robert Adam
Verso
Perspective ink drawing of a symmetrical building with four corner tower, central dome and porticoes in a landscape. Also two details, one for a rococo Gothic window, which is of the type found in Adam volume 54, Series 4 and in Adam vol.55/4 and 20. Both the elevation and plan here have been deliberately obscured or cancelled.
Notes
This composition can be compared with those in Adam vol.9/58 and 61, and like them it may be related to Robert Adam's proposal of 1756 for rebuilding the centre of Lisbon, Portugal, destroyed in the fire and earthquake of 1755 (see K. Maxwell, Pombal, Paradox of the Enlightenment, Cambridge, 1995, and A. A. Tait, Robert Adam: drawings and imagination, Cambridge, 1993, pp.40-50). The striking hemicycle at the top of the composition can be compared with the smaller version found in Adam vol.55/10.
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