Designs for the ornamentation of the upper part of the Scala Regia, 21 August 1822

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Palace of Westminster: designs for alterations and additions, 1793-1828 (499)
    - London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: alterations and additions, 1817-28 (220)
      - Royal Entrance and Scala Regia, 1822-23 (68)
        Designs for the Scala Regia, August 1822

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Reference number

SM 71/2/53

Purpose

Designs for the ornamentation of the upper part of the Scala Regia, 21 August 1822

Aspect

Full size details Parts at large (full size details) of the King's Entrance into the House of Lords; (verso) section through dome

Scale

Full size

Inscribed

as above, labelled: House of Lords, A full size, B full size, C full size, D full size, E full size, F full size, G on the Plan and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

21 August 1822
21 August

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pink and sepia washes (verso: pen and pink washes), pricked for transfer on wove paper (513 x 702)

Hand

Arthur Patrick Mee (1802 - 1868)
Pupil January 1818 - November 1823.

Watermark

Smith & Allnutt 1817

Notes

The lettering of the parts at large refers to labelling on SM 71/2/44 which shows the full height of the Scala Regia. That drawing reveals that much of the ornamentation was derived from the engravings and descriptions in Desgodetz's Les Édifices Antiques de Rome (1682). Antique motifs such as acanthus leaves and egg and dart moulding are here employed alongside typically Soanean elements such as the ball mouldings in part 'A'. The details in this drawing are for the upper part of the Scala Regia, including parts of the first barrel vault, the central dome and the cornice. On the verso of the drawing is a section through a coffered dome, the location of which is unknown.

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

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.

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