Adam, Robert
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- Adam, Robert
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(1728 - 92), architect, 2nd s. of William Adam, architect of Edinburgh; Edinburgh U. 1743; jt. Architect of the King's Works 1762 - 8; MP 1768 - 74; FSA; FRSA.
1755 - 7 [dep. Edinburgh, via London, Oct. 1754] Genoa (9 Jan. 1755), Leghorn, Pisa, Florence (30 Jan. - 20 Feb.), Siena, Rome (24 Feb. - Apr.), Naples (Apr. 1755), Rome (22 Apr. - 13 Sep.), Caprarola, Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Rimini, Ravenna, Rome (by 12 Oct. 1755 - Jun. 1756), Sora (Jun.), Rome (Jun. 1756 - May 1757), Florence (May), Bologna (8 days), Padua (by 23 Jun.), Venice (6 - 11 Jul.) [Spalato, Dalmatia, 22 Jul. - 28 Aug.] Venice (11 Sep. - 12 Oct. 1757) with visits to Vicenza and Verona [London, 17 Jan. 1758]
Following some eight years of architectural practice in the family firm before and after his father's death, in 1748, and ambitious to improve his professional education, Adam accepted an invitation by their client, the 2nd Earl of Hopetoun, to accompany the latter's younger brother, Charles Hope-Weir, to Italy. Aware of the need to circumvent social barriers as an architect and to benefit from the highest social contacts, Robert adopted the role of a 'Gentilhomme Anglois' from one of the 'ancientist families in Scotland' (as privately expressed in the surviving, extensive correspondence with his family throughout the tour).1 Moreover, the lucrative family business provided Robert with a capital of some £;5000 to support this venture handsomely.
They arrived in Genoa early in January 1755 and through Hope's influence were soon at the opera, seated in the Balbi's box. 'The burghers don't imagine we are anything but first rate who dare presume on such familiarities with the Balbis', he wrote, even going so far as to dismiss the British consul, John Birtles, as being 'a rank below us'. Having enjoyed the social life in Leghorn and Pisa, they reached Florence on 30 January for the last two weeks of the Carnival. There, however, Adam began making his first serious professional contacts. Apart from meeting the collector and scholar Baron Stosch, he acquired valuable contacts through the painter and marchand amateur, Ignazio Hugford; although finding the latter's paintings too costly, he claimed to have 'been the more extravagant in drawings of which I have made a noble purchase to the satisfaction of all conoisseurs here'. The sculptor Joseph Wilton - 'an excellent artist and an obliging companion' - guided him round the galleries and monuments. More importantly, it was the architect Charles-Louis Cl?risseau (then en route for France after expulsion from a three-year training at the French Academy, Rome, and then staying with Hugford) who, Adam writes, 'created fire and emulation in my breast'. Recognising the considerable advantages of Cl?risseau's avant-garde knowledge and Roman contacts, Robert retained him on a financial basis as a teacher and companion for the rest of the tour: a crucial collaboration which lasted into the 1770s.2
After their arrival in Rome, Adam's relationship with Hope-Weir began to cool, especially after Robert successfully took over Sir Charles Hotham's rooms in the Casa Guarnieri, above the Spanish Steps and one of the best addresses in the English quarter, where the Duke of Bridgewater and his 'bear leader' Robert Wood were then staying. While by then the Abb? Grant was arranging Adam's social life, which included the circle of the artist Allan Ramsay, Robert had resolved to commence serious study. He was already aware of the formidable challenge of William Chambers, then ending five years of travel in Italy and 'a prodigy for Genius, for sense & good taste'. Adam, having found English travellers 'much prepossessed' in favour of this rival, recognised the need to acquire 'a taste superior to what I ever thought of before I saw Rome and of which at this moment I am quite ignorant'. He declined to accompany Hope-Weir to Naples, but, changing his mind, went separately with Cl?risseau and the Abb?s Grant and Stonor. On their arrival in early April they explored Baiae, Cumae, Solfatara, the Grotto of Posillipo and the new palace at Caserta. At Herculaneum, the museum at Portici, where Ramsay's friend Camillo Paderni was curator, particularly interested Adam, and Cl?risseau made many sketches there. However, due to the uncomfortable heat, they left on 20 April for Rome which, Adam states, 'pleases me more than this place'.
Back in the Casa Guarnieri, where Adam deliberately kept his distance from fellow practitioners, he hired an elegant coach and considered himself 'like the King of Artists'. A strict daily r?gime of instruction was now instituted, studying figures, ornament and perspective with Cl?risseau, and two other French artists, Jean-Baptiste Lallemand and Laurent P?cheux.3 Meanwhile his social life was carefully directed towards making influential contacts and his greatest coup, in May 1755, was to meet Cardinal Albani ('son eminence and me are grit as dogs' heads') while he regularly attended the conversazioni of Albani's mistress, the Countess Cheroffini at her palace in the Piazza Pilotta. Above all, the crucial encounters which were to change radically Adam's entire approach to imaginative composition in design took place with Piranesi from the following June onwards.4 While the latter was 'of such disposition as bars all instruction, his ideas in locution so ill arranged, his expression so furious and fantastic', Robert was swift to recognise the Venetian's stimulus in that 'so amazing and ingenious fancies as he has produced in the different plans of the Temples, Baths and Palaces and other buildings I never saw ... are the greatest fund for inspiring and instilling invention in any lover of architecture that can be imagined'. From then onwards they were in regular contact, and over the summer went on sketching expeditions to sites such as the Baths of Caracalla and the Villa Adriana. Adam also considered producing a revised edition of Desgodetz's Edifices Antiques de Rome, partly for self-advertisement and to improve his technical understanding of classical design and vocabulary. Such matters were discussed with Ramsay and Wood who, with the Abb? Grant, came to form what Adam called 'my Caledonian Club'.
When Hope-Weir finally left Rome on 3 September 1755, Adam shortly set out, in a smart new carriage, on a six-week tour to the Adriatic coast; he recorded the Temple of Clitumnus near Spoleto, as measured by Palladio, and went as far as Rimini and Ravenna. They returned to Rome by 12 October 'with a Portfolio with Triumphal Arches, Ancient Bridges and other views of whatever appeared curious and worth drawing'. As work intensified, Robert requested (in vain) for his brother James to come out to help in the survey of antiquities necessary to produce the new Desgodetz. Further frustration was occasioned by the presence of the two energetic Mylne brothers, who had arrived in January 1755 to study architecture, offering yet more potential competition. 'Shoals of English' poured into Rome every day in December, wrote Adam critically, 'great Lords, great Fools and sensible Gentlemen', of whom Robert particularly cultivated the 10th Earl of Huntingdon and Sir William Stanhope.
During the winter of 1755 and into the following year, despite the welcome distractions of the Carnival, Cl?risseau continued with his tuition in composition and Adam's designs also reflected the impact of the Desgodetz project. By March 1756 work on the latter required more draughtsmen and he recruited Agostino Brunias and Laurent-Benoit Dewez, while by July a copy of Burlington's Fabbriche Antiche was required from London to check Palladio's drawings on the site. Meanwhile, daily sketching expeditions with Cl?risseau, which often included Ramsay, carried on through the spring and summer in the Forum and Palatine and further afield at Hadrian's Villa (where Piranesi was then carrying out an extensive survey). Detailed records were also made of Renaissance buildings, such as Palazzo Mattei, Palazzo Farnese, Villa Madama and Villa di Papa Giulio, with special attention to their rich ornamentation.
In April 1756, Adam's confidence was considerably boosted by the publication of Piranesi's magisterial Le Antichita Romane, incorporating a particularly flattering reference ('Roberto Adam Britann. Architecto Celeberimm.') in the frontispiece of Volume II ('representing the Appian Way in all its ancient splendour, with all the mausoleums of the Consuls, emperors &ca., he [Piranesi] has taken the occasion to put in Ramsay's name and mine with all our Elogiums, as if buried in these tombs').
Following the disastrous earthquake which had destroyed almost the whole of Lisbon in the previous December, Adam became obsessed with the design for a grandiose new city. In search of new experiences in June he set off south with Cl?risseau to Sora, 'the country of the Samnites and Volsci' but found little of architectural consequence. With his thirtieth birthday on 3 July, he became 'vastly melancholy' and plunged into further work with the team of draughtsmen. However, by September he was forced to renounce the Desgodetz project since it was retarding 'more material studies' and resolved to concentrate on the more important secular buildings, primarily the major thermae. Already by November Diocletian's Baths were 'almost finished' and Caracalla's 'advancing apace', to his satisfaction much improving on the work of Palladio and Burlington before him. Looking back on this work a few months later, he considered these thermae 'amongst the most extensive and noble buildings of the ancients. By them these emperors have shown mankind that true Grandeur was only to be produced from simplicity and largeness of parts and that conveniency was not inconsistent with decoration'.
At the beginning of October 1756 he spent a late villeggiatura for a few days in Albano with the Abb?s Grant and Stonor, followed by a brief visit to Frascati. Then, on return to Rome, he bought a new suit and awaited the winter influx of milordi. Among the latter he met Lords Elgin and Rosebery, as well as Miss Diana Molyneux who was led to question how the 'gay, cheerful and frolicsome' man she had met in her house could also be the 'studious, laborious and enterprising' Mr Adam in the Casa Guarnieri. Predictably, his studies again began to suffer as such society beckoned; he took a box at the opera for the season. By January 1757, with the prospect of his departure coming ever closer, this enforced double life resulted in a fever, during which he was attended by the Pretender's physician, Dr James Murray, and his colleagues, Drs Grierson and Irwin (the latter opining that 'a guid glass of claret will cure ye quite. God damme, Sir but Byng would gae a thousand mile a foot to be as weal as ye are!').
On recovery in the spring of 1757, Adam now began preparing his return journey. An entire room in Casa Guarnieri was filled with his large collection of fragments, vases, marbles and old masters (the latter for profitable sale in London). While these were to return by sea, there were also great quantities of drawings which, wisely, he intended to take himself. He dined with Gavin Hamilton and, on visiting Piranesi's establishment nearby at Palazzo Tomati, was delighted to find his friend busy etching a large visionary map of the Campus Martius with a fulsome dedication to himself as 'the Patron of Architecture', along with other flattering tributes. (He was successful in persuading Piranesi to incorporate this into an ambitious folio, also dedicated to him, which was issued in 1762; see James Adam). With great reluctance, he eventually left Rome at the beginning of May, accompanied by Cl?risseau, Dewez and Brunias and followed by the Ramsays.
Adam's progress north was something of a social triumph. Unlike his initial visit to Florence, Horace Mann received him with marked attention, as did Count Algarotti, the celebrated virtuoso, in Bologna. He was equally welcomed in Padua by John Murray and consul Joseph Smith. His reputation, meanwhile, had been confirmed by election to three Italian academies: the Accademia Clementina, Bologna (14 April 1757); the Accademia del Disegno, Florence (30 April 1757); and the Accademia di S.Luca, Rome (8 May 1757). From Padua Adam and Cl?risseau travelled slowly by burchiello along the Brenta, visiting Palladian villas, before reaching Venice on 6 July. Among those he met, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu considered him 'a man of genius'.
Since diminishing finances and lack of time prohibited an expedition to Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, he set out to make his last important study, of Diocletian's Palace in Spalato (then spelt 'Spalatro'). The Dalmatian town was garrisoned by Venetian troops and, as luck would have it, his friend, General William Graeme of Bucklyvie was then Commander in Chief. After gaining special permission for the visit through consul Joseph Smith (visited at his Mogliano villa), Adam, accompanied by Cl?risseau, Dewez, Brunias, and his servant Donald, sailed from Venice on 11 July and reached Pola six days later. Having learned that Stuart and Revett had already planned to survey the amphitheatre there, they sailed on to Spalato, arriving on 22 July. There they drew and partly excavated the ruined palace which was largely encased by the medieval town, work being hampered by suspicions that Adam was a spy. After having four people 'constantly at work' over a period of five weeks, he left on 28 August and eventually reached Venice on 11 September. Later that month he visited Vicenza to study the works of Palladio, 'his adored master', although at Verona he told the antiquarian Torelli he judged Sanmichele to be the better designer.
His final departure from Italy was delayed by rumours of British hostilities, but having negotiated with Count Rosenberg, the Austrian minister in Venice, he successfully obtained passes and set out on 12 October, reaching Augsburg across the Alps a month later. Meanwhile Cl?risseau was left behind at Vicenza with a retaining fee of £;100 per annum, both to distance him from rivalling Robert in England and ostensibly to supervise the engraving of the Spalato plates in Venice until James Adam arrived on his own tour.
1. See Fleming, Adam, 106 - 240. 2. See T.J. McCormick, C.-L. Cl?risseau and the Genesis of Neo-classicism. 3. O. Michel in Piran?se et les Fran?ais, ed. G. Brunel, 333 - 5. 4. See J. Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer.
J. W.-E.