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Reading the ruins: Robert Adam and Piranesi in Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

A. A. Tait
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Extract

In 1755, Robert Adam was introduced to Piranesi in Rome. By the following year the relationship had developed sufficiently for Adam to become one among several of Piranesi’s patrons. This friendship was cemented by a partial dedication of volume 11 of the Antichità Romane, in 1756. And so it continued until Adam’s departure from Rome in the spring of 1757. Apart from the intellectual benefits such an encounter held for Adam, the more tangible record lay in the books of Piranesi’s etchings in his library and a chalk and ink capriccio, now in the Soane Museum. It is possible to clarify this bond between master and pupil by assessing a small group of drawings divided between two private collections, at Blair Adam and at Penicuik House. Together, they show Adam and Piranesi at work as topographic artists, and they make clear — alas — the shortcomings of Adam.

Type
Section 7: Recording and Criticism
Information
Architectural History , Volume 27: Design and Practice in British Architecture , 1984 , pp. 524 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1984

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References

Notes

1 For the relationship between Adam and Piranesi see Damie Stillman, ‘Robert Adam and Piranesi’, Essays in the History of Architecture presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. Fraser, D. Hibbard, H. and Lewine, M.J. (1967), pp. 197-206 Google Scholar; and more generally, Fleming, John Robert Adam and his Circle (1962)Google Scholar; Wilton-Ely, J. The Mind and Art of G. B. Piranesi (1978); and Scott, jonathon Piranesi (1975) pp. 165-68.Google Scholar

2 Adam’s drawing of the cascatelle is in the Blair Adam Collection, 288, the Piranesi print in the Vedute di Roma, 2 vols (Rome, 1765) pl. unnumbered; see Hind 92 11 who dates it to 1769.

3 The two drawings are Blair Adam Collection, 172, and Clerk of Penicuik Collection, 187.

4 Adam’s two pen and ink drawings of the remains of the Acqua Vergine are in the Clerk of Penicuik Collection, seejohn Fleming, ‘An Italian sketchbook by Robert Adam, Clérisseau and others’: Connoisseur (1960), pp. 190-92. In Fleming’s checklist, an unidentified drawing 77 is a further view of the Acqua Vergine. This part of the aqueduct is now built over though parts of it are visible in the cellars of the Collegio del Nazareno.

5 Piranesi’s depictions of such views are in his Vedute di Roma series while those by Adam are predominantly in the Clerk of Penicuik Collection, see Fleming, Connoisseur, pp. 192-93.

6 For a discussion of this see Wilton-Ely, op. cit., pp. 57-59, Joseph Rykwert, The First Moderns (1980), pp. 36990, and Karl Lehmann ‘Piranesi as interpreter of Roman Architecture’, Catalogue: Piranesi (Northampton, 1961), pp. 88-98.

7 Rykwert, op. cit., pp. 370, 387-88, 390.

8 For this see Fleming, Robert Adam and his Circle, p. 229 and especially pp. 312-13.

This may also be part of the reason for Adam’s fear of Sir William Chambers expressed in his Roman letters. In March, 1755, he acknowledged Chambers’s superiority and in April saw him as a ‘mortal check’ (p. 160) and in July hoped ‘I shall do infinitely better than Chambers’ (p. 169). In March, 1756, he was pleased to hear that ‘Chambers is not doing great things’, injune, hoped to squash ‘the pride of presuming Chambers’ (p. 205), but this fear continued after his return to London, see pp. 249-50. More generally seejohn Harris, Sir William Chambers (1972), p. 23.

9 Adam was at Albano in October 1756, see Fleming, op. cit., p. 219. For Piranesi’s fascination with the subterranean canal, see Scott, op. cit., pp. 169-71. The dating of Piranesi’s prints of the same view appears in his Antichità D'Albano e di Castel Gandolfo in 1764, see Hans Volkmann, Piranesi als Architekt und Graphiker (Berlin, 1965) pp. 63-65. The associated volume of the Descrizione e Disegno dell’Emissario del Lago Albano, appeared in 1762/64, see Volkmann, pp. 59-62.

10 It is quite obvious that before the sale of the Adam drawings to Sir John Soane in 1833 all the drawings were together, see Tait, A. A. ‘The Sale of Robert Adam’s drawings’, Burlington Magazine, 120 (1978), 451-54.Google Scholar

11 For an account of Clérisseau in Rome see Thomas McCormick, 'Piranesi and Clérisseau’s vision of Classical Antiquity’, Piranesi et les Français: Académie de France e Rome II, ed. Georges Brunei (Rome, 1978) pp. 303-12; and for Lallemand, see Olivier Michel, ‘Recherches sur Jean-Baptiste Lallemand a Rome’, ibid., pp. 327-44. For a discussion of the characteristics of the figure drawing of Piranesi and his son Francesco see Adriano Cavicchi and Siila Zamboni, ‘Due Taccuini inediti’, Piranesi tra Venezia e l’Europa: Civita Venezianna Saggi 29, ed. Alessandro Bettagno (Florence, 1983), pp. 212-16.

12 The Adam drawing is in the Cterk of Penicuik Collection, 154: that attributed to Clérisseau is in the Blair Adam collection, 164. Of the two, the Blair Adam drawing is closer to the viewpoint taken by Piranesi.

13 There are two drawings in Ramsay’s sketchbook in the National Gallery of Scotland, D. 4878. Folio 26 shows a sketch of the submerged arch beside the church of S. Maria della Libera at Aquino, and there is a further sketch on f. 34. Ramsay notes for May 17S6: ‘Arch over Mildam near a ruined Church called Madonna della libera a few miles northward of M Cassino, where there are built in some freezes, entablatures, inscriptions and other antique fragments’ (ibid., f. 35). For an account of these remains see Eliseo Grossi, Aquinium (Rome, 1907).

14 Drawings 156 and 159 in the Clerk of Penicuik Collection. Both S. Maria della Libera at Aquino and the cathedral at Sora were altered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially Sora Cathedral which since the earthquake of 1917 bears little resemblance to Clérisseau’s sketch. For an account of the nineteenth-century history of Sora, see Beranger, E. M. La Cinta Muraria di Sora (Sora, 1981).Google Scholar

15 For his early drawings see Tait, A. A. Catalogue: Robert Adam at Home (1978), pp. 17, 20, and Fleming, op. cit., pp. 90-92.Google Scholar