John Soane and the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli

John Soane has left us the text of twelve lectures which he gave at the Royal Academy, together with several volumes of preparatory drafts, and the notes he made during the long evenings from 1806–09 as he read the works of the principal theorists of his day. In addition we have his published works, entire private correspondence, notebooks and office documentation. From his lectures we know his recommendations for good practice in general, as well as a range of personal preferences. We know really very little, however, about his personal intentions in architecture. We have the evidence on the one hand of his own idiosyncratic abstracted style, seen at its best in the facade of his Museum, at Dulwich Picture Gallery, at the lodge at Tyringham and in the interiors of the Bank, and on the other his preoccupation with the creation of monumental public buildings, which seem to have mattered most to him, as David Watkin has stated.