'The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe (c.1565-1655) preserved at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London - a new online critical edition cum catalogue'

The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe (c.1565-1655) consists of some 295 drawings ranging primarily from the 1590s to the 1620s and covering 168 buildings, mainly but not only English, and amongst the greatest of the period. The drawings include plans, elevations, some full-size sections of mouldings, and a depiction of the five orders derived from Hans Blum’s 1550 treatise on the orders.

Bound in a hard cover in the 18th c., since 1810 the album has been preserved in one of London’s most iconic museums of British architecture, created by the celebrated architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837), who added to the album with about six sketches of his own.

Alongside new catalogue entries featuring digital copies of the drawings in colour, enlargeable, and uncut, my edition will include a c.40.000-word critical analysis addressing all aspects above-mentioned. For the first time, this material will be freely available on the Museum’s website, with a fully-searchable database, bibliography, and links to other collections. At the forefront of internationally-admired scholarly cataloguing standards, the Soane provides the ideal infrastructure for this project, which has academic, professional, and pedagogical potentials.