Drawings or documents held in the Sir John Soane’s Museum will be referred to as SJSM. References in the style ‘x/y/z’ refer to a drawing in drawer x, folder y, numbered z; references in the style ‘Vol. X, No. y’ refer to a drawing in Volume X, numbered y.

1 After demolishing the pre-existing house, Soane began to build his new villa on 7 March 1801 (SJSM, Ealing Account Book, fol. 4), and its shell was covered by the first of July (SJSM, Ealing Account Book, fol. 10). For the history of Pitzhanger Manor, see Dorothy Stroud, ‘Sir John Soane and the Rebuilding of Pitzhanger Manor’, in In Search of Modern Architecture: A Tribute to Henry-Russell Hitchcock, ed. Helen Searing (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1982), pp. 38-50; Emmeline Leary, Pitzhanger Manor (London, 1990); Ptolemy Dean, Sir John Soane and the Country Estate (London, 1999), pp. 90-96; Gillian Darley, John Soane: An Accidental Romantic (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 150-68; Heather Ewing, ‘Pitzhanger Manor’, in John Soane Architect: Master of Space and Light, ed. Margaret Richardson and Mary Anne Stevens (London, 1999), pp. 142-49. For the Pitzhanger drawings held in the Sir John Soane’s Museum, see Sir John Summerson’s typescript notes in the museum’s Red Boxes and the more recent, unpublished catalogue by Virginia Brilliant.

2 The final work on the design of the vestibule was carried out between 12 July 1801 (SJSM, 31 /4/34) and 29 July 1801 (SJSM, 31/4/33). On Soane’s method of designing interiors, see Middleton, Robin, ‘Soane’s Spaces and the Matter of Fragmentation’, in John Soane Architect, pp. 26–39 Google Scholar (p- ²^)-

3 The volume is shelfmarked C.i90.b.22 (1, 2). For the history of the volume and a description of its composition, see Bianca de Divitiis, ‘A newly discovered volume from the office of Sir John Soane’, The Burlington Magazine, 1200 (2003), pp. 180-98. The designs in the British Library volume are indicated by the numbering given in the appendix to this article (pp. 197-98), prefixed by the letters BL. Of the four drawings discussed in the present article, BL131 was already partly examined in The Burlington Magazine and will be reconsidered here in relation to the other three drawings of Pitzhanger’s interiors in the British Library volume.

4 These details appear for the first time in SJSM, 31 /4/23r. The resemblance of the elevation of the rooms’ south wall in this drawing with a small sketch by Soane (SJSM, 31 /3/27V), dated 19 October 1801, suggests that also SJSM, 31 /4/23r belongs to the same period. The four watercolours SJSM, Vol. 59, No. 142; and Vol. 60, Nos 127-29, dated December 1801, show that by this time Soane had settled definitively on the functions of the two rooms.

5 In the drawing SJSM, 31/4/25, dated 2 August 1801, showing an initial stage of what would finally be the Breakfast Room, a manuscript annotation by Soane refers to the door as ‘door into Eating Break.t Room’; he also writes, near the section of the wall, ‘Spring, of semicircular window in Library determines this’.

6 The resemblance of the Breakfast Room to a tomb-chamber was pointed out by Summerson, John, ‘Sir John Soane and the furniture of death’, The Architectural Review (1978), pp. 147–55 Google Scholar (p- ¹49)-

7 The caryatids appear in SJSM, Vol. 59, No. 142, dated December 1801. SJSM, 31/4/1 is the first dated drawing where the niches on either side of the chimney have assumed the form of columbaria, and are represented in plan, elevation and section, together with measurements. SJSM, 31/4/2 shows vases and urns within the same niches. Two sketches by Soane showing the Breakfast Room’s columbaria are in the Soane /Richardson collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A, 3306.180-81): these were probably done before the fair drawings in the Sir John Soane’s Museum. See Pierre de la Ruffinibre du Prey, Sir John Soane, Catalogues of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1985), p. 103, nn. 428-29.

8 Cf. Thomas Hope, Household and Furniture (London, 1807), pi. III. For the history of the Duchess Street house, see Watkin, David, Thomas Hope (1769-1831) and the Neoclassical Idea (London, 1968), pp. 93–124 Google Scholar; Thornton, Peter and Watkin, David, ‘New Light on the Hope Mansion in Duchess Street’, Apollo (1986), pp. 162–76 Google Scholar; Watkin, David, ‘Thomas Hope’s house in Duchess Street’, Apollo, 505 (2004), pp. 31–39.Google Scholar The parallel between Pitzhanger’s columbaria and those represented in Hope’s ‘Room Containing Fictile Vases’ was pointed out by Susan Feinberg Millenson, Sir John Soane’s Museum (Ann Arbor, 1987), pp. 18-21. She suggests that Soane’s inventive use of this feature was possibly inspired by the columbaria which appear in Charles-Louis Clbrissau’s watercolour ‘Interior of a sepulchral chamber’, which was in his collection. Millenson also emphasizes how a Gothic version of a columbarium had already appeared in Walpole’s unexecuted project for Strawberry Hill (c. 1757). See also Dorey, Helen, ‘Sir John Soane’s Pitzhanger’, in Trackers. 2004 An Exhibition by Twenty One Artists, ed. Alejandro Ospina and Charles Danby (London, 2004), pp. 17–32 (pp. 26–28).Google Scholar For the use of columbaria in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, see Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 228; Susan Feinberg Millenson, ‘The Genesis of Sir John Soane’s Museum Idea, 1801-1810’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 43 (October 1984), pp. 225-37 (P- ²34)-

9 SJSM, Private Correspondence, I/I/H/22; this is the draft copy of Soane’s letter to Hope of 29 March 1804. Cf. Watkin, Thomas Hope, pp. 227-28. Soane’s Notebooks record various exchanges between Soane and Hope between March and May 1804 (SJSM, Soane Notebooks 60-62).

10 SJSM, Soane’s Notebook 46: 21 May 1802, Friday, ‘Mr Hope at 11 ... Mr Hope at 12 / on Monday’; 25 May, Tuesday: ‘Mr Hope at 12’. The Day Books entries are slightly more detailed: 21 May 1802: ‘Mr Hope/Called on him at 11’; 25 May 1802: ‘Mr Hope called at 12’. It is probable that these visits took place shortly before Hope left London in the spring of 1802 to undertake a third tour in Italy. See Watkin, , Thomas Hope, pp. 9, 99 Google Scholar; Ingamells, John, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy. 1701-1800 (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 521–22.Google Scholar Gillian Darley has suggested that Soane and Hope already knew each other before 1804, probably through John Britton (Darley, John Soane, p. 193).

11 Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 96.

12 Soane visited Pozzuoli at the beginning of January 1778, where he drew a plan and section of the ‘burying places’. Pierre de la Ruffiniere Du Prey, John Soane’s Education, 1733-80 (New York, 1977), p. 166; fig. 162. Another of Soane’s sources might have been the engraving in Pietro Santi Bartoli’s Gli Antichi Sepolcri (Rome, 1697-99), pi. 40. The two small Doric columns without bases, shown in the central niche in one of Soane’s sketches held in the Victoria and Albert Museum (3306.180) could be considered as a kind of tribute to Hope and his advocacy of the Greek style. See Du Prey, Sir John Soane, p. 103, no. 429. Watkin, Thomas Hope, pp. 61-92.

13 Summerson, ‘Soane and the furniture of death’, p. 149; Stroud, ‘Sir John Soane’, p. 44; Joyce, Hetty, ‘The ancient frescoes from the Villa Negroni and their influence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Art Bulletin, 3 (1983), pp. 423–40 (p. 438)Google Scholar; Millenson, ‘Genesis’, p. 18.

14 The decoration of the Breakfast Room must have been carried out between 17 October 1802, when Soane listed it among the works still to be done in the house (SJSM, ‘Business to be done’), and 21 January 1803, when, with the help of his son John, he arranged the vases in the room (SJSM, Soane’s Notebook 53). See Bristow, Ian, ‘The restoration of John Soane’s colour scheme in the Breakfast Room at Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing’, Association for Studies in the Conservation of Historic Buildings Transactions, 11 (1986), pp. 43–48.Google Scholar See also Cruikshank, Dan, ‘Soane and the meaning of colour’, Architectural Review (1989), pp. 47–52.Google Scholar

15 For a discussion of the dating of BL131, see de Divitiis, ‘A newly discovered volume’, pp. 192-93.

16 I would like to thank Dr Ian Bristow for discussing this point with me. At 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields (1792-94), Soane had already abandoned the normal white on the joinery in favour of graining in the Dining Room, and used bronzing in the Breakfast Room. See Bristow, Ian C., ‘The Use of Colour’, in The Regency Great House, ed. Malcolm Airs (Oxford, 1998), pp. 71–77 Google Scholar; Cruickshank, Dan, ‘The Breakfast Room’,? Architectural Review, 1182 (1995), pp. 76–80.Google Scholar The notes on colours which appear on the recently discovered Tatham drawing for Duchess Street do not allow us to state with certainty that Hope was also using the same painting techniques. On these annotations, see Watkin, Thomas Hope, p. 34.

17 Soane seems to have been in contact with the most advanced paint-dealers. In the Sir John Soane’s Museum there is a copy of the 1815 trade leaflet of the paint-dealer Thomas Bentley (SJSM, Correspondence Cupboard XIV/M/33) and two editions of his pamphlet entitled Prospectus of the various paints (1817; 1818), where Bentley claims responsibility for the invention of ‘Anti-corrosive paint’ and ‘New Metallic and Aromatic Paint’, particularly appropriate for the imitation of ‘marble, satin wood, rose wood, &c. &c.’ (SJSM, Pamphlet Vol. A/9-10). Soane’s use of this paint at the Bank of England is referred to in the main text (p. 12), and several of the architect’s clients are named in the appendix as having already placed orders with Bentley’s firm.

18 It is interesting to note that the mirrored pilasters, depicted in BL129, revive an idea that Soane first worked on in a drawing of the adjacent room when this was still intended to be the Library (SJSM, 31/4/24).

19 SJSM, Vol. 60, Nos 127 and 129, both dating from December 1801, establish a date post quern for BL129, since the decoration of the cross vault and of the small barrel vault do not show the final design. SJSM, Vol. 60, No. 128, undated, was done after SJSM, Vol. 60, Nos 127 and 129 and, apart from the heads of the poets at the centre, is very similar to BL129.

20 SJSM, 31/4/39. BL129 could plausibly be dated between April and May 1802. The office’s Day Books reveal that between 30 April and 3 May 1802 Soane’s pupils were working on a view of the Library.

21 Only one sketch by Soane exists of the four heads of the poets, dated 17 October 1802 (SJSM Archive, ‘Business to be done’). As has been noted, the final decoration of the cross vault resembles the one in the Breakfast Room of 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the one used by George Dance the Younger in the Ballroom at Cranbury Park. For the relationship between this kind of decoration and plate 16 in Pietro Santi Bartoli, Gli Antichi Sepolcri, see Dorothy Stroud, George Dance architect, 1741-1825 (London, 1971), pp. 229-30.

22 Soane could have seen the use of this feature in the necropolis of Porta Ercolano at Pompei, during his visit in January 1779: Du Prey, John Soane’s Education, pp. 173-74.

23 For example, this use of differentiating the decoration of the ceiling appears in Roman cubicola. See Scagliarini, Daniela Corlaita, ‘Spazio e decorazione nella pittura pomeiana’, Palladio, 23-25 (1974-76), pp. 3–44 (p. 21)Google Scholar; Dickmann, Jens-Arne, Domus frequentata (Munich, 1999), pp. 219–28.Google Scholar For a discussion of Soane’s ceilings, see Woodward, Christopher, ‘Wall, Ceiling, Enclosure and Light: Soane’s Designs for Domes’, in John Soane Architect, pp. 62–67.Google Scholar

24 In SJSM, 31/3/9, dated 24 December 1800, which shows for the first time the definitive plan of the house, the sequence of the ceilings of the Breakfast Room and Library is already established.

25 This type of scheme survived in the baths of private houses in Campania between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. See Caskey, Jill, ‘Steam and "Sanitas" in the Domestic Realm: Baths and Bathing in Southern Italy in the Middle Ages’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 58 (1999), pp. 170–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arthur, Paul, ‘The "Byzantine" Baths at Santa Chiara, Naples’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplement 37 (1999), pp. 135–46 (p. 142).Google Scholar It should be remembered that Soane considered thermal baths as ‘rich mines of information which enlighten the mind of the young artist, and add materially to his store of intellectual acquirement’ (Du Prey, John Soane’s Education, pp. 114-15).

26 SJSM Archive, Private Correspondence, III/7. Gandy’s letter to Soane is dated 1 November 1802. Gandy’s bill for the two perspectives, dated 4 December 1802, indicates that he worked on the view of the Breakfast Room from 15 August to 29 September 1802, and that of the Library from 3 October to 3 December 1802.

27 Details, such as the chimneypiece and the mirror, appear for the first time in these two drawings.

28 The date inscribed by Soane on the sheet of the drawing (‘6 Aug. 1802’) seems to have been added later; this could explain the slight discrepancy with the established dating. It is interesting to note that BL130 shows an analogous situation to BL131 showing the Breakfast Room, where ink annotations and colour samples were added during the second half of October 1802 on an earlier perspective, done in the first week of August 1802.

29 John Soane, Plans, Elevations and Perspective View of Pitzhanger (London, 1833). See Divitis, Bianca De, ‘Plans, Elevations and Perspective Views of Pitzhanger Manor-House’, The Georgian Group Journal, 14 (2004), pp. 55–74.Google Scholar The Soane/Richardson relationship and the original provenance of the Richardson volumes in the V&A was first explored and exposed in Du Prey, Sir John Soane, pp.11-22, and in Alistair Rowan, Robert Adam, Catalogues of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1988) pp.11-24. F°^{r a} discussion of Soane’s drawings held in the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, see Pierre de la Ruffiniere du Prey, ‘Soane drawings — a laying on of hands’, in Architecture and Ideas, 3.1, John Soane (2001), pp. 10-23.

30 De Divitiis, ‘Plans’, pp. 61-64, 7²-