'Like a Roman sepulchre': John Soane's design for a Castello d'acqua at Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, and its Italian origins

Apollo, April, 2003 by David Adshead

(10) Dance's winning scheme, for a Public Gallery, was highly acclaimed. Soane was later to use (copies of) Dance's designs--elevation, plan and section--to illustrate the eighth of his series of Royal Academy lectures; see David Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 367-68, plate 102.

(11) On 7 June 1763, Dance had written to his father George Dance Senior (1695-1768): 'There could not be a better opportunity than that which offer'd itself at Parma ... where all Italy nay all Europe may concur', Sir John Soane's Museum, Dance Cabinet, Slider 4, Set 11, Item 1 (verso), cited in du Prey, op. cit. in n. 9 above (1982), p. 177, note 13. For a discussion of the importance placed by British architects on membership of the Italian academies, see Damie Stillman, 'British Architects and Italian Architectural Competitions, 1758-70', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. XXXII, March 1973, pp. 43-66; Frank Salmon, 'Charles Heathcote Tahtham and the Accademia di S Luca, Rome', Burlington Magazine, vol. CXL, no. 1139 (February 1998), pp. 85-92, and idem, Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture, London, 2001, pp. 32-35.

(12) Dance was a friend of Ravenet's father, Simon Francois l'Ancien (1706-74) who, possibly brought from France to work with William Hogarth (1697-1764) on his 'Marriage a la Mode' series, settled in London in c. 1750.

(13) See Marco Pellegri, Concorsi dell'Accademia Reale di Belle Arti di Parma dal 1757 al 1796, Parma, 1988. For an account of the Progetti for 1780, see ibid., pp. 167-76. The 'first Palm' was won by the Parisian architect Auguste Chevalle de Saint Hubert, while the second prize went to the Milanese architect Vicenzo Poma. The Castello d'acqua was not the first of the Academy's competitions to have a watery theme; in 1765, the architectural section of the Parma Concorso had called for a Cascata d'acque, or cascade, and in 1772 Bagni pubblici, or public baths. In translation, the Parma specification reads: 'A Castello d'acqua decorated with a public fountain. The plan, elevation and section are required of a resevoir for water, which will be supposed to be collected in it in the greatest abundance for the convenience and ornament of a metropolis. The facade, then, of this building will be set at the end of a wide piazza, and will be adorned with all the magnificence of a public fountain, divided into several springs and flowing from statues, rocks or animals, as the fantasy of the architect decrees: his invention may be distinguished by the representation of some myth or history. Accomodation is also required, linked to the reservoir, for the hydraulic engineers and the custodians of the building.'

(14) Soane's draft letter, with the date left blank until the fair copy could be sent off, was written at 'Milan, Augst. 1779'. Soane and Burdon went directly from Parma to Milan.

(15) Sir John Soane, Memoirs of the Professional Life of an Architect, London, 1835, p. 14. Soane was subsequently to help Pitt with the repair and alteration of his house at Boconnoc, Cornwall--for their correspondence, see BL, Add MS 69328, art. 2, fols. 1-72 (1786-88).