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Signed and dated
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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).
Contents of Adam Volume 4
- Unfinished capriccio showing a circular and domed building with portico on a basement, with a thermal window, and approached by a double staircase. To one side is a wing of two arcaded bays.
- Unfinished architectural design showing the façade of a three-bay pavilion of two stories with a niche containing sculpture between coupled pilasters, all of which supports a pediment and attic with six flaming urns. Above this is a three-storey square tower with aedicular windows between coupled pilasters and an attic with small pediment.
- Unfinished capriccio showing a draped figure seated on a strigillated sarcophagus within a projecting niche, with more niches on either side. To one side is a composition of a pyramid, arcade and round tower.
- Unfinished study showing the interior of a church with a three-bay portico with balustrade above; to one side is a large altar [?] with segmental pediment. A vaulted roof is supported by pilasters between niches.
- Unfinished capriccio showing the ruined interior of a barrel-vaulted hall with elaborate ceiling decoration, two Ionic columns with lintel and thermal window above. Beside a flanking wall are two free-standing statues on rectangular plinths.
- Unfinished perspective showing houses among ancient ruins, with a damaged portico beyond, which has birds nests on top of it. A rider allows his horse to drink from a trough beneath a Gothic arch. The secene is populated with people, dogs and another horse, and drawn within an ink border.
- Unfinished capriccio of the interior of a ruinous ancient building with a vew through a screen supported by four columns, to further ruins. Tourists in contemporary dress admire the roofless ruins which house architectural fragments. The drawing is within an ink border.
- Unfinished perspective of ancient ruins with tree tops behind
- Unfinished capriccio showing a ruined triumphal arch with couple free-standing columns on either side of several recessed arches, with similar columns leading to a hall with niches and relief panels.
- Unfinished cappricio showing the interior of a vaulted structure, the vault supported by broad columns. Beyond can be seen a larger, taller and better lit room.
- Unfinished capriccio showing a section of a ruined circular hall with a coffered and decorated ceiling around an oculus with niches in the walls, and a free-standing sarcophagus on a base in the centre. To one side is vaulting.
- Capriccio of two anicent buildings, the further one a ruin. In the foreground is piled ancient carved stone fragments,
- Capriccio showing part of a ruined Colosseum-like building of three stories adjoining a two-bay cottage with small tower and balcony. Alongside is a roadway with three figures, one mounted, and a child beneath a tree.