Neoclassical Architecture

  • Facade of the Farnese Palace in Rome],

    Nicolas Beatrizet (artist)
    France, c.1507-66; active Italy (Rome)
    Antoine Lafréry (known as Antoine Lafreri) (publisher)
    France (Burgundy), c.1512-77; active Italy (Rome)

    Exterior orthographia frontis Farnesianae domus [Facade of the Farnese Palace in Rome], 1549
    Engraving
    from Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae [The Mirror of Roman Magnificence]

    Purchased, 2020
    Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections
    2000.2001

  • The Lothbury Corner of the Bank of England

    John Lionel Berry (draughtsman)
    Fiji,1885 1962; Australia from 1900

    The Lothbury Corner of the Bank of England, Sir John Soane, c.1906-11
    Pencil drawing

    Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections
    0000.1148

    Between 1906 and 1911, Australian architect John Berry was a student at the Royal Academy in London. He made hundreds of studies of buildings in Britain and on short trips to France and Italy, which are now in the collection of the University of Melbourne. These two drawings were made after designs by John Soane. They show the direct transference of ideas to Berry, and the creative influence that the Grand Tour had on the development of Soane’s signature style of Neoclassical architecture. Soane drew the mausoleum for Whig statesperson William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708 –1778), on hearing of Pitt’s death whilst in Rome in 1778. His celebrated design for the Bank of England’s ‘Tivoli Corner’ (now demolished), directly references the Serapeum of Hadrian's Villa and the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, near Rome.

  • Plan of a design made by J. Soane in 1779 in Italy for a mausoleum for the Earl of Chatham

    John Lionel Berry (draughtsman)
    Fiji,1885 1962; Australia from 1900

    Plan of a design made by J. Soane in 1779 in Italy for a mausoleum for the Earl of Chatham, c.1906-11
    Pencil drawing

    Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections
    0000.0929

  • Designs for public and private buildings

    John Soane (author)
    England, 1753-1837

    Designs for public and private buildings, 1828
    London: Priestley and Weale, ... Rodwell, ... and Ridgeway

    Rare Books Collection, Archives and Special Collections
    UniM Bail SpC/ARCHIT ef 720.942 SOA.1

    In 1778 architect and collector John Soane was awarded the Royal Academy scholarship for a three-year Grand Tour of Italy. Reflecting on this later in life Soane wrote, ‘This was the most important event of my life. For it was the means by which I formed those connexions to which I owe all the advantages I have since enjoyed’. The professional and social advantages gained from taking part in the Grand Tour were immense, and by the time Designs for public and private buildings was published in 1828, Soane was Professor of Architecture in the Royal Academy; one of the architects attached to His Majesty's Office of Works; architect to the Bank of England; Fellow of the Royal Society; a Royal Academician; a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries; a Member of the Academies of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Parma and Florence; and the owner of one of the most famous private museum collections of antiquities in London.