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‘Storming the Campo Vaccino’: British Architects and the Antique Buildings of Rome after Waterloo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Frank Salmon
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Extract

The later eighteenth century was a period when, as a result of increasingly eclectic and picturesque taste in the use of the classical language of architecture, young British architects were effectively compelled to spend some years studying in Italy if they wished to reach the forefront of their profession. The importance of this first-hand experience of Italy is attested by the physical and financial hardships many architectural students were prepared to endure in order to gain it, as well as by the fact that the pattern of travel continued unabated in the face of political hostilities in which Britain was periodically engaged within Europe. During the Seven Years War of 1756–63, for example, when the British found themselves at enmity with the French, the Austrians and, after 1762, with the Spanish, no fewer than eight British architects nevertheless travelled on the continent and did so relatively unimpeded. In fact there was at least one British architectural student present in Italy in every year between 1740 and 1797. This consistent pattern of travel was brought to an enforced end, however, when the Italian peninsula itself became the setting for overt military action after Napoleon had invaded Piedmont in April 1796. While five British architectural students managed to reach Italy during the brief peace which followed the conclusion of the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, one finding it possible to travel ‘through the heart of France without the least molestation’, the deterioration of Anglo-French relations after Trafalgar in 1805 left the peninsula largely inaccessible to the British until the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo on 18 June 1815.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 38 , 1995 , pp. 146 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1995

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References

Notes

1 Robert and James Adam, Robert and William Mylne, George Dance the Younger, George Richardson, John Baxter and James Wyatt. For minor inconveniences to Robert and to James Adam caused by the war see Fleming, J., Robert Adam and his Circle (London, 1962), p. 178, 238, 241, 267, 288, 290, and 294Google Scholar. In February 1758 William Mylne had to destroy all his English documentation and impersonate an Italian in order to avoid capture by Austrian soldiers in the Dolomites (British Architectural Library [hereafter BAL], MyFam 4/28: William Mylne to Robert Mylne, 15 February 1758). Dance sailed directly from England to Italy in 1758-59, presumably to avoid travel through France. See The Diary of Joseph Farington, 16 vols (New Haven and London, 1978-84), IX, ed. Cave, K., (1982) p. 3192 Google Scholar, for an account of Dance’s ‘tedious’ voyage, and D. Stroud, , George Dance, Architect: 1741-1825 (London, 1971), p. 62 Google Scholar. Kalman, H. (‘The Architecture of George Dance the Younger’ (doctoral thesis, University of Princeton, 1971), p. 53 Google Scholar) took a statement of Samuel Angeli that Dance knew Paris well as evidence that Dance’s outward itinerary lay through France (through which he certainly returned in 1764). The war also prevented Dance from shipping casts back to his father in London (BAL, DA i/i/ii(v)-iii(r) and iv(v)-v(v): George Dance the Younger to George Dance the Elder from Rome, 2 November 1760 and 31 January 1761).

2 Tappen, G., A Short Description of a Tour through France and Italy (London, 1804), p. 75 Google Scholar. Tappen was in Italy 1802-03. The four other British architects who reached Italy during this period were: William Wilkins Junior, in Italy 1801-02; Robert Smirkejunior, in Italy 1802-04; Joseph Kay and Thomas Martyr, in Italy together 1802-04. Having aroused the suspicions of the French, Smirke was prevented from sketching at Toulon in Novemberi 802 (BAL, SMK 1/9: Robert Smirkejunior to Robert Smirke Senior, 21-27 November 1802) but he was otherwise treated with civility by them.

3 The only British student-architects said to have travelled specifically to Italy between 1805 and 1815 are John Newman and Archibald Simpson around 1806-07 and 1811-13 respectively, but the evidence for these visits is scanty (see Colvin, H., A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (London, 1978), p. 589 and 735Google Scholar). The architect Thomas Allason, however, travelling as draughtsman to John Spencer Stanhope, did pass through Trieste and Pola in early 1814 en route for Greece and from Otranto back through Italy en route for Paris and London in late 1814 or early 1815. See Stanhope, J. Spencer, Topography Illustrative of the Battle of Platea (London, 1817), pp. 16–17 and 53Google Scholar.

4 For the purposes of this study, an ‘architect’ is defined as a figure meriting an entry in Colvin’s Biographical Dictionary. Thus travelling dilettanti and some other potentially relevant figures, such as Edward Dodwell and John Soane Junior, have been excluded.

5 BAL, CoC Add. 1/29: C. R. Cockerell to S. P. Cockerell, 15 August 1815. See also Watkin, D., The Life and Work of C. R. Cockerell, R.A. (London, 1974), pp. 17–19 Google Scholar.

6 George Basevi, Thomas Cundy Senior and Thomas Cundy Junior, John Goldicutt, Matthew Evan Thomas, Joseph Gwilt, Peter Robinson, Richard Sharp and Joseph Woods.

7 In 1817 the arrivals were Charles Barry, Edward Cresy, John Foster, William Kinnard, William Purser, John Sanders and George Ledwell Taylor. In 1818 they werejohn Bond, Thomas Leverton Donaldson, Henry Graham, Philip Hardwick, Henry William In wood and Lewis Vulliamy. In 1819 they were Thomas Jeans, Ambrose Poynter and John Lewis Wolfe. The number present in any one year declined to thirteen in 1820, although new arrivals were William Booth, John Davies, Henry Parke, Samuel Paterson and Lewis Wyatt. In 1821 there were still twelve present, with Samuel Angeli, Frederick Catherwood, William Harris and Charles Tyrell as the new arrivals. Between 1822 and 1825 there were between eight and ten architects present each year. The new arrivals were: Joseph Scoles and possibly Richard Bridgens and Richard Brown (1822); William Hosking, John Jenkins, Charles Mathews and Arthur Mee (1823); Charles Parker, James Pennethorne and Sydney Smirke (1824); George Wightwick and Joseph Woods (1825), the latter making his second visit since 1815.

8 Peter Robinson, Joseph Woods, John Sanders, John Bond and Lewis Wyatt belong to this category. There was also the exceptional case of the Cundys, in which the middle-aged father accompanied his son to Italy.

9 Among architects other than Soane’s pupils who had been Royal Academy students when Soane assumed the professorship and who subsequently travelled to Italy were: Thomas Allason, Samuel Paterson and Lewis Vulliamy (all enrolled 1809), John Goldicutt and Matthew Evan Thomas (1812), Thomas Leverton Donaldson (1815), Samuel Angeli (1816), Sydney Smirke (1817), William Booth and William Harris (1819), Joseph Scoles (1820), and John Jenkins (1821). I am grateful to Nicholas Savage for assistance in compiling this list. Others who enrolled before 1809 but who may nevertheless have attended the lectures include John Gandy-Deering and William Kinnard (both enrolled 1805), William Purser (1807) and Philip Hardwick (1808). Since guests could be taken to the lectures, however, many more students still may have heard Soane tell them in his third lecture that their ‘only acquaintance with the remains of the structures of the Ancients must be obtained by a great sacrifice of time and expense’ in travelling to observe and to measure ( Bolton, A., ed., Lectures on Architecture by Sir John Soane (London, 1929), p. 57 Google Scholar).

10 Observations on the Plans and Elevations designed by James Wyatt, Architect, for Downing College, Cambridge; in a letter to Francis Annesley, Esq., M. P., by Thomas Hope (London, 1804).

11 BAL, SMK 1/15: Robert Smirke Junior to Robert Smirke Senior, 20 March 1803. See also Crook, J. Mordaunt, ‘The Career of Sir Robert Smirke R. A.’ (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1961), p. 35 Google Scholar.

12 BAL, SMK 1/14: Robert Smirke Junior to Robert Smirke Senior, 28 February 1803.

13 BAL, SMK 1/18: Robert Smirke Junior to Robert Smirke Senior, 12 August 1803. See also Mordaunt Crook, ‘Robert Smirke’, p. 44.

14 Allason, T., Picturesque Views of the Antiquities of Pola in Istria (London, 1819), p. 22 Google Scholar: ‘The French, who had quitted the town a short time previous to our arrival, had reduced to ruins the walls and citadel, and within the former this gateway was enclosed and concealed. On examining this scene of wanton demolition, a portion of cornice was discovered: that circumstance, on further inspection, encouraged an excavation, by which we were able to take the necessary dimensions for the restoration of the whole’. Another account of the discovery is given in Spencer Stanhope, Topography, pp. 16 and 93: ‘I contented myself with digging down to the base of the centre column, by which means I was enabled to obtain all the necessary measurements’. Neither measurements nor restoration were included, however, among the plates in Allason’s book. He excused his failure to offer measured drawings of the other Roman buildings at the site by indicating that he believed they had been fully studied by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett. In fact, Stuart and Revett’s measured drawings of Pola, made in 1750, had finally been published only by Woods, Joseph in The Antiquities of Athens, IV, (London, 1816)Google Scholar (not in volume 1 as indicated in D. Watkin, , Athenian Stuart: Pioneer of the Greek Revival (London, 1982), p. 19 Google Scholar), by which time of course the French interventions had rendered them somewhat outdated. Pola was ceded to Austria by the Congress of Vienna in 1814, but it had been in Venetian territory from the middle ages until the wars at the end of the eighteenth century.

15 This important eplsode has finally received the full treatment it deserves in Ridley, R., The Eagle and the Spade: Archaeology in Rome during the Napoleonic Era (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar. In seeking to establish the impact of the French works on travellers after 1815 in his prologue (pp. xix-xxiii), Ridley discussed responses to the changed Roman landscape published in guidebooks and diaries. The present article is based on the largely unpublished written and drawn records left by the numerous travelling British architects.

16 Wood, R., The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor in the Desart (London, 1753)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wood, R., The Ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Coelosyria (London, 1757)Google Scholar; Adam, R., Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro (London, 1764)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Adam’s work at Split see E. Harris assisted by Savage, N., British Architectural Books and Writers 1556-1785 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 52–53, 76-81Google Scholar, and Brown, I.G., Monumental Reputation (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 32–45 Google Scholar.

17 See Pietrangeli, C., Scavi e scoperte di antichità sotto il pontificato di Pio VI, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1958)Google Scholar; Haskell, F. and N. Penny, , Taste and the Antique (New Haven and London, 1981), pp. 74–78 Google Scholar; and H. Gross, , Rome in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 310-30Google Scholar.

18 Stuart, J. and Revett, N., The Antiquities of Athens, 1 (London, 1762), p. i Google Scholar.

19 Carletti, G. and Mirri, L., Le antiche camere delle Terme di Tito e le loro pitture (Rome, 1776)Google Scholar.

20 See Salmon, F., ‘Charles Cameron and Nero’s Domus Aurea: una piccola esplorazione’, Architectural History, 36 (1993), 69–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further details on the Commissarii see Ridley, R., ‘To Protect the Monuments: The Papal Antiquarian (1534-1870)’, Xenia Antiqua, 1 (1992), 117–54, pp. 138–45Google Scholar.

21 BAL, MyFam 4/55: Giambattista Piranesi to Robert Mylne, 11 November 1760: ‘non ho trascurato l’occasione di disegnarlo e misurarlo in ogni sua parte . . . Siccome esiste peranche il castello alle tre colonne il Sig. G. Dance a Lei ben cognito, e studusissimo di queste antichità, non ha voluto tralasciare una delle più rare occasioni, qual’è La presente, per ritrarre in gesso Le forme delle parti dello stesso monumento’. A translation of Piranesi’s letter made on paper watermarked 1824 (BAL, MyFam 4/56) was substantially reproduced in Gotch, C., ‘The Missing Years of Robert Mylne’, The Architectural Review, 110 (September, 1951), 179–82, p. 182Google Scholar.

22 BAL, DA 1/1/i(r): George Dance Junior to George Dance Senior, 4 October 1760. Kalman, ‘George Dance’, p. 54, mistakenly identified the scaffolded temple as that of’Jupiter Tonans’ [Vespasian].

23 The first mention of such scaffoldings by an Englishman after Dance appears to come in a letter of 1795, when Joseph Michael Gandy reported being unable to afford to raise them in order to obtain the proper measurements of antique architecture he required (BAL, Gandy Family, Box 1, Letter 20: Joseph Michael Gandy to Thomas Gandy, 15 August 1795). In Rome in 1803 Robert Smirke found there to be ‘very considerable difficulty attending on accurate study of most of these works as scaffoldings would be required, for which besides the great expences incurred more time would be required than I think would be repaid by the possession of the drawing’ (BAL, SMK 1/14: Robert Smirke Junior to Robert Smirke Senior, 28 February 1803).

24 Sir John Soane’s Museum [hereafter SM], 23/9/3. Although this drawing has been attributed to Henry Parke and the student shown wears Regency dress, an inscription on the reverse shows that it was prepared as an illustration for Soane’s second Royal Academy lecture, as given on 25 February 1819, pre-dating Parke’s arrival in Italy in 1820. Thus the image can be presumed to represent Soane’s recollection of his own method of study in 1778-80. I am grateful to Mrs Margaret Richardson for discussing this evidence with me. For further accounts of the measuring campaigns of Soane with ladders, lines and rods, see du Prey, P. de la Ruffinière, ‘Soane and Hardwick in Rome: A Neo-classical Partnership’, Architectural History, 15 (1972), 51–67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the same author’s ‘John Soane’s Architectural Education, 1753-80’ (doctoral thesis, University of Princeton, 1972), pp. 114, 120, 123. Fig. 108 in the latter shows Soane’s own on-site sketch of the cornice of the Temple of Castor and Pollux (SM, AL, Miscellaneous Sketches 1780-82, fol. 143).

25 de Montaiglon, A. and Guiffrey, J., eds., Correspondance des Directeurs de l’Académie de France à Rome, 17 vols (Paris, 1887-1908), XIV, p. 38 Google Scholar. No British student appears to have been killed while measuring, but there were certainly falls and injuries. In April 1804, for example, Smirke badly damaged his knee ‘by falling from a considerable height upon a rocky ground while measuring some ruins of an ancient monument’ between Rome and Naples (BAL, SMK 1/25 Robert Smirke Junior to Robert Smirke Senior, 22 April 1804).

26 Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection [hereafter RIBA DC], H1/2, fol. 92r/v. This ‘model’ may have been the second ‘cast’ (the terms were used interchangeably) which Dance reported he was having made to present to his master Giansimoni in 1760, since Dance claimed that the entablature ‘was never modelled before’ (BAL, DA 1/1/i(v): George Dance Junior to George Dance Senior, 2 November 1760). It has also been suggested that Hardwick’s contemporary at Rome, Soane, might have seen the casts made for Dance (du Prey, ‘Soane’s Architectural Education’, p. 120). Presumably, however, copies were easily made once a cast had been taken from usually inaccessible original elements. The casts of the temple’s capital and cornice now in Soane’s Museum (Corridor, M45 and M47), for example, were purchased by Soane in 1801 from the collection of Willey Reveley who had acquired them when he was in Rome himself between 1784 and 1788 (I am grateful to Ms Helen Dorey at Soane’s Museum for communicating this information to me).

27 John Work Garrett Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Folio NA 311.H3 1777, fol. 23: ‘Entablature to three columns in the Campo Vaccino at Rome’.

28 Camille, , de Tournon, Comte, Etudes Statistiques sur Rome et la Partie Occidentale des Etats Romains, 2 vols and plates, (Paris, 1831), 11, p. 238 Google Scholar: ‘pendant la seconde occupation non-seulement elle vit respecter religieusement tous ceux qu’elle avait conservés, mais elle fut témoin des soins de l’administration pour la restauration de ses monumens. Si ses trésors à la première époque enrichirent quelques hommes avides ou furent transportés en France, dans la seconde ils furent entièrement consommés a l’avantage du pays, et une administration étrangère donna le rare spectacle d’une conquête traitée à l’égal de la patrie elle-même’.

29 See Ridley, Eagle and Spade, especially chapter 3 and plate 70 for Bartolomeo Pinelli’s drawing of the raising of the entablature of the Temple of Vespasian.

30 SM, ‘George Basevi 1794-1845 . . . Home Letters from Italy and Greece 1816-1819’, typed transcript ed. A. Bolton, p. 57. See also Woods, J., Letters of an Architect from France, Italy, and Greece, 2 vols., (London, 1828), 1, p. 331 Google Scholar: ‘The French conferred, says my friend Mr [Richard] Sharp, a great many benefits on the Italians, but the greatest of all was in going away. An antiquary might be disposed to wish, that this had been deferred two or three years more, as far at least as relates to Rome. The excavations are not however, entirely discontinued, but they are not carried on with the same spirit as formerly’.

31 Describing his activities in Rome fifty years later, George Ledwell Taylor claimed that he and Edward Cresy had carried out excavations there (see Taylor, G. L., The Autobiography of an Octogenarian Architect, 2 vols., (London, 1870-72), 1, p. 87 Google Scholar). Taylor’s memory evidently played him false, for in 1822 they had only noted generally that: ‘The Apostolic Chamber grant leave to individuals to excavate round the objects of antiquity, and undertake to remove the ground so dug out; but generally . . . fail in the performance of their part of the contract’ ( Taylor, G. L. and Cresy, E., The Architectural Antiquities of Rome, 2 vols., (London, 1821-22), 11, p. 20 Google Scholar). The costs incurred put such operations beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest individuals, let alone students. According to Basevi in Rome in November 1816: ‘The English are very anxious about what is being dug at present and I should not be very surprised to hear a party of them subscribing to place more men at work’ (SM, ‘Basevi Transcript’, p. 57). Basevi was almost certainly anticipating the clearance of the Column of Phocas in 1816-17, paid for by the Duchess of Devonshire, of which he wrote to his father in January 1817: ‘There is an excavation going forward in the Campo Vaccino which promises some interest, and I propose watching its conclusion. I shall then enclose a letter to [Soane] in one to you’ (SM, ‘Basevi Transcript’, p. 70). The inscription on the column had been uncovered in 1813 and the Devonshire clearance began on 19 December 1816 (see Ridley, Eagle and Spade, pp. 123-26, p. 298, n. 108).

32 Taylor, and Cresy, , Antiquities, 1, p. 4 Google Scholar. Taylor’s exceptional watercolour of the west side of the Arch of Titus in 1818 (Victoria and Albert Museum, Collection of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, E. 1360.1953) shows an architect drawing the coffers from a much simpler platform suspended between the tops of the two reliefs.

33 BAL, DA 1/1/ii(v)-iii(r): George Dance Junior to George Dance Senior, 2 November 1760.

34 BAL, TaG/1/1/1. See also Taylor and Cresy, Antiquities, 1, p. 4: ‘By the kind assistance of the Marquess Canova, who has the direction of all the monuments of antiquity, we obtained leave to erect scaffolds to each; and every facility was afforded us in prosecuting our studies’. Canova’s authority extended beyond agreeing to the erection of scaffoldings. In 1820 he gave Lewis Wyatt permission to get casts made of elements of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. These were subsequently purchased by Soane and are now in his Museum (M8, M36, M952 and M1030, and letter to Soane from Wyatt of March 1834). I am grateful to Ms Helen Dorey for these references. Also in 1820-21 Canova supplied John Davies with a certificate permitting him to make drawings of objects in the Capitoline Museum (Sotheby Sale Catalogue, 18 November 1971, lot 22).

35 Archivio di Stato, Roma, Camerlengato I (1816-24), Antichità e Belle Arti, Busta 42, Fasciolo 231, items 1 and 4, Busta 43, Fasciolo 260, item 4.

36 Ridley, Eagle and Spade, chapter 2.

37 Canova had been appointed Inspector General of the Fine Arts by Pius VII in August 1802. The letter of appointment is printed in Fea, C., Viaggio ad Ostia (Rome, 1802), p. 115–17Google Scholar. I am indebted to Dr Ronald Ridley for this reference and for further information about the General Consultative Committee for the Fine Arts.

38 SM, ‘Basevi Transcript’, p. 112.

39 RIBA DC, Study Room Shelf B3, T.L. Donaldson Sketchbook Greek and Roman, fols. 34V (Fig. 4 here), 35r, 36r and 37r. Folio 40r shows two moulding details taken from the Temple of Mars Ultor, which possibly relate to the study for which Donaldson together with Wolfe gained a licence in February 1822 (Appendix B, document 3). The paper is ruled with horizontal tramlines and periodic verticals, so that the curved mouldings could be drawn in free-hand.

40 See, for example, Rossini, Luigi, Vedute di Roma: antichità romane divise in cento tavole (Rome, 1819-23)Google Scholar. Despite all the work which was going on in Rome, Rossini’s views are peculiarly passive in effect. Even the substantial scaffolding of the Arch of Titus, which Rossini drew in 1819 (plate 71), goes unnoticed (see Fig. 3 here). By contrast, the British architect Ambrose Poynter, arriving in Rome in 1820, was immediately struck by this scaffolding: ‘The crown of the Arch threatens a crash, & is only supported by a scaffold’ (Yale Center for British Art, B1975.2.775, fol. 24r).

41 RIBA DC, J6/230. The plan of the temple, dated 11 December 1816, is J6/229; J6/231 represents the capital and architrave; J6/234 the architrave and frieze.

42 Taylor, Autobiography, 1, p. 87.

43 SM, ‘Baseyi Transcript’, p. 214.

44 Basevi first mentioned their presence in Rome on 13 February (SM, ‘Basevi Transcript’, p. 209).

45 Taylor, Autobiography, 1, pp. 87-8; 147.

46 Victoria and Albert Museum, Collection of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, E.4087-1918.

47 Taylor, and Cresy, , Antiquities, 11, p. 1 Google Scholar.

48 Taylor, , Autobiography, 11, p. 251 Google Scholar.

49 Desgodetz, A., Les édifices antiques de Rome dessinés et mesurés très exactement (Paris, 1682)Google Scholar, (Paris, 1697). The Library of Congress has a first edition dated 1683 and the British Library a reprint dated 1695. For an extensive account of Desgodetz see Hermann, W., ‘Antoine Desgodets and the Académie Royale d’Architecture’, The Art Bulletin, 40 (1958), 23–53 Google Scholar.

50 There was no consistency in this method, which evidently depended on the nature of the access Desgodetz had to each monument. The occasional appearance of token peripheral foliage hinted at the actual state of the buildings in the later seventeenth century. The Temples of Hercules Victor, of Antoninus and Faustina and of Saturn were reduced to their surviving antique elements only. No attempt was made to restore the submerged podium of the Temple of Vespasian whereas the Temple of Portunus was shown with its submerged podium fully restored.

51 Fleming, Robert Adam, pp. 170, 179, 204, 212-13 and 217.

52 BAL, MyFam 4/55: Piranesi to Mylne, 11 November 1760: ‘ho condotto al monumento diversi di questi Sig. Inglesi, e quivi col Desgodet alla mano ho mostrato Loro, che questo autore ha diversificato tutti gli ornamenti, e in consequenza ne ha altevate per lo più Le misure’.

53 BAL, ReW/1, fols. 279V, 35r, 237v and 305r.

54 Stroud, D., Henry Holland: His Life and Architecture (London, 1966), p. 136 Google Scholar. This view reflects that expressed in the Monthly Review, 46 (February 1772), pp. 140-41, that a copy of Desgodetz was essential to the classical connoisseur, the antiquarian and the man of taste. However, Holland’s comment displayed remarkable ignorance, for Cameron’s Baths of the Romans (London, 1772)Google Scholar attempted to be ‘corrective’ of Palladio’s drawings of the Roman baths as published in Lord Burlington’s Fabbriche antiche (London, 1730, actually after 1736)Google Scholar rather than of Desgodetz, whose book included only one bath building among its 25 monuments.

55 Marshall, G., The Ancient Buildings of Rome by Antony Desgodetz, 2 vols., (London, 1771-9)Google Scholar; Les édifices antiques de Rome dessinés et mesurés très exactement sur les lieux (Paris, 1779). Marshall’s parallel text edition ‘inviolably preserved both measures and designs . . . and . . . has not deviated from the Paris-foot’. The new French edition, instigated by the Peyres, presented ‘ces mêmes planches . . . avec le texte de l’auteur, que l’on redonne sans aucune changement’. For Marshall see further Harris and Savage, Architectural Books, pp. 180-82.

56 Bolton, Soane Lectures, pp. 37 and 57.

57 Piranesi’s four-volume Le antichità romane of 1756, though it contains many more images, is a work representative of a genre of book quite different from the architectural survey as typified by Desgodetz, Taylor and Cresy. Many of Piranesi’s etchings have a scale of Roman palmi, but few are given any actual measurements. Moreover, few orders are shown in detail.

58 Raccolta delle più insigni fabbriche di Roma Antica e sue adjacenze, misurate nuovamente e dichiarate dall’Architetto Giuseppe Valadier, illustrate con osservazioni antiquarie da Filippo Aurelio Visconti (Rome, 1810-26). Valadier was responsible for the first six monuments (the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, 1810; the Temple of ‘Vesta’ at Tivoli, 1813; the Temple of Hercules Victor, 1813; the Temple of Castor and Pollux, 1818; the Temple of Vespasian and Column of Phocas, 1818). The Theatre of Marcellus (1822) and the Temple of Mars Ultor (1826) resulted from surveys undertaken by Francesco Saponieri.

59 Les édifices antiques de Rome/Gli edifizi antichi di Roma (Rome, 1822), p. iii: ‘lo stesso Desgodetz qualche volta avevano lavorato d’ingeno, e in falso. Però ... ho creduto più confacevole, di far precedere l’opera originale nelle due lingue; e reunire in corpo a parte dei supplementi, i quali anche mano mano si anderanno aumentando nel fratempo con altre scoperte’. The supplementary volume, the work of Luigi Canina, eventually appeared in two parts twenty-one years later as Supplemento all’opera sugli edifizi antichi di Roma dell’Architetto A. Desgodetz (Rome, 1843).

60 For the purpose of the comparisons that follow I have taken the English foot to be 30.5 centimetres, the Paris Royal foot to be 32.5 centimetres, and the Vicentine foot to be 35.7 centimetres. All sums have been rounded up to the nearest millimetre. It should be noted that the majority of Desgodetz’s measurements are given in modules, the module being half the diameter of a monument’s column just above its base. Each module is divided into thirty parts and sometimes beyond that into fractions of a part. Since only the value of the individual module is expressed in Paris Royal feet, it has been necessary to convert Desgodetz’s modular measurements first into Paris Royal feet and from there into metric.

61 Jones, M. Wilson, ‘Designing the Roman Corinthian Capital’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 49 (1991)Google Scholar, Appendix 1 on p. 142.

62 Valadier, , Raccolta, IV (1818)Google Scholar, plates 2 and 3.

63 Desgodetz, , Les édifices, (1682), p. 129 Google Scholar. According to Wilson Jones ‘Some of Desgodetz’ illustrations . . . appear to be accurate, but others are not’. He found Desgodetz to be out by 20 centimetres with the capital height of the Hadrianeum: ‘While the error may be accidental, some measurements may have been invented so as to convey completeness’ (see Wilson Jones, ‘Roman Corinthian Capital’, p. 110, n. 21).

64 Palladio, A., I quattro libri dell’Architettura (Venice, 1570), Book IV, p. 69 Google Scholar.

65 RIBA DC, H1/3, fol. 65V.

66 SM, ‘Basevi Transcript’, pp. 214-15.

67 Wightwick, G., ‘Sketches of a Travelling Architect’, Library of the Fine Arts, 11 (1831), 14–30, p. 29Google Scholar. See also Wightwick, G., Hints to Young Architects, 2nd ed. (London, 1846), p. 20 Google Scholar: ‘It is [the travelling student’s] sketch and note book, rather than his measuring rod, which should occupy his foremost attention. He requires less to fill his paper with dimensions than his mind with IDEAS’.

68 Jenkins, J. and Hosking, W., A Selection of Architectural and other Ornament . . . drawn from the Originals in various Museums and Buildings in Italy (London, 1827), especially p. 1 Google Scholar: ‘Finding . . . that they had procured casts, and made drawings of many very beautiful specimens of Architectural Ornament, which had never been published in England . . . and learning that so considerable an improvement had been made in the operations of Lithography by Messrs. Engelman, Graf, Coindet, and Co., . . . [the authors] engaged with those gentlemen to bring forth their proposed work’. See also the lithographs in Wightwick, G., Select Views of the Roman Antiquities (London, 1827)Google Scholar, where the illustrations provided were of those monuments ‘as retain some portion ofthat ornamental architecture which constituted their pristine magnificence’ (p. 6). Also worthy of mention here is Vulliamy, L., Examples of Ornamental Sculpture in Architecture (London, 1823-26)Google Scholar, though Vulliamy’s thirty-nine plates were engraved rather than lithographed.

69 RIBA DC W5/59 5/5. The columns were cleared to their bases under Valadier and the French in 1810. An exploration of the podium was made in 1813, but the clearance was not made until 1816-18 when the true identity of the temple was established (see Ridley, Eagle and Spade, pp. 188-89). In 1818 Basevi reported to Soane that the government had ‘employed galley slaves in endeavouring to discover the ancient plan of the temple hitherto called Jupiter Stator, but now by all the antiquaries that of Castor and Pollux’ (SM, ‘Basevi Transcript’, p. 313). Soane, however, does not seem to have acknowledged the changed dedication. In their chapter on the Temple of ‘Jupiter Stator’, Taylor and Cresy stated that as antiquarians had yet to agree on the dedication ‘we prefer giving it the appellation by which it has generally been known’ ( Taylor, and Cresy, , Antiquities, 11, p. 19 Google Scholar).

70 British Museum, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Cockerell Miscellaneous Drawings Box, items 11 and 14 (in March 1993). A version of Cockerell’s reconstructive view of the Forum was engraved by Giacomo Rocme at Rome in about 1816. Cockerell exhibited his reconstruction drawing at the Royal Academy in 1819 and it was also engraved in London in 1824.

71 Wightwick, ‘Sketches’, 11, 111-120, p. 112.

72 Pennethorne’s election to the academy is recorded in its minutes: ‘Si propose Accad[emico] d’Onore Pennerohiorne Arch[itetto] Inglese’ (Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, Rome, Vol. 60, fol. 91v); ‘Si propose Accad[emico] d’onore Giacomo Pennethorne archit[ett]o Inglese che ha esposta un Sua disegno del restauro del Foro Romano — Viene accettato in Accad[emi]co d’onore’ (ANSL, Vol. 76, no. 23, now filed under Misc. Cong., 1, no. 81). For Pennethorne’s drawings see Tyack, G., Sir James Pennethorne and the Making of Victorian London (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar, Figure 7 and colour plate 1. According to Tyack such reconstructions were ‘a common enough exercise in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’ among British students (p. 12), although I have been unable as yet to find an eighteenth-century example. I must thank Dr Tyack for corresponding with me on this point.

73 See Stroud, Holland, p. 85 and, for a good colour view of the Carlton House portico, Summerson, J., Georgian London, 5th ed. (London, 1988), p. 102 Google Scholar. It has been suggested that for both the National Gallery and the University of London (1827–28) Wilkins’s preference was for the order of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, though this was in its completed form a building of Hadrianic date (see Liscombe, R., William Wilkins 1778-1839 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 159 and 196Google Scholar).

74 For an excellent exposition of this point see Watkin, D., ‘Archaeology and the Greek Revival: A Case-Study of C. R. Cockerell’, in White, R. and Lightburn, C., eds., Late Georgian Classicism, Papers Given at the Georgian Group Symposium 1987 (1988), 58–72 Google Scholar.

75 Wolfe’s architectural activities all took place as an adjunct to Barry’s. Harris never returned to Britain, dying of malaria at Palermo in 1823. Angell and Davies had moderately successful careers as surveyors and architects prepared to work in various styles. Catherwood became well known as a draughtsman to archaeological expeditions, before setting up practice in New York. He drowned in the Atlantic in 1854 while returning to America from a visit to England.

76 Taylor, , Autobiography, 1, pp. v and 47Google Scholar.

77 RIBA DC, Uncatalogued Box of Prints N16. This print is no doubt that published by Donaldson with the legend ‘No. 50, the First of the best class’, in frustration at his failure to gain the commission (see Esdaile, K., ‘Battles Royal — No. 1: Some Great Architectural Controversies of the Past’, The Architect and Building News, (9 January 1931), 47–49, p. 48Google Scholar). For the elevation of Donaldson’s portico (RIBA DC OS 5/42) see Blutman, S., ‘The Father of the Profession’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 74 (December 1967), 542-44, p. 542, Fig. 3Google Scholar.

78 William Grellier’s design, which won the first premium, had a relatively shallow hexastyle portico (RIBA DC OS 5/14 1-12).

79 Tyack, Pennethorne, Fig. 19. Tyack calls this design ‘an essay in the style of the early Roman Empire which [Pennethorne] had so admired in Italy’ (p. 40). In fact the Temple of Castor & Pollux terminated at the front in a rostrum, not a second flight of steps.

80 Watkin, D., The Triumph of the Classical: Cambridge Architecture 1804-1834 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 13 Google Scholar. The same idea appears in the front of Stracathro House of 1828 by Archibald Simpson (see Watkin, D., The Buildings of Britain — Regency: A Guide and Gazetteer (London, 1982), p. 10 Google Scholar.

81 Crook, J. Mordaunt, The Greek Revival: Neo-classical Attitudes in British Architecture 1760-1870 (London, 1972), p. 98 Google Scholar, quotes W. R. Hamilton citing Birmingham Town Hall in an 1836 list of buildings showing the ‘Greek Revival’s supremacy’, although Mordaunt Crook pointed out that the Greek Revival ‘was never wholly Greek’ (p. 77). By contrast see Hitchcock, H-R., Early Victorian Architecture in Britain, 2 vols (London, 1954), 1, p. 300 Google Scholar, for the suggestion that Birmingham Town Hall belongs among British ‘direct imitations of Greek temples’.

82 Hansom, J., A Statement of Facts Relative to the Birmingham Town-Hall (Birmingham, 1834), p. 6 Google Scholar; [Welch, E.], ‘A Descriptive Account Accompanied by Plans, Elevations and Sections etc. of the Birmingham New Town Hall’, The Architectural Magazine and Journal, 2 (January 1835), 16–27, p. 19 Google Scholar: ‘The design . . . was a simple Corinthian temple (after the example ofthat of Jupiter Stator) mounted on an elevated rustic basement’. Later in his article, however, Welch called the Town Hall’s general effect ‘a revival of the age of Pericles’ (p. 27). This either demonstrates how inconsistent and imprecise architectural terminology could be in the early nineteenth century or that Welch, with extraordinary perspicacity, recognised that the Temple of Castor and Pollux was itself a ‘Greek Revival’ building!

83 The city’s street commissioners were insistent that the Town Hall Committee should not permit the architects to expand any plan beyond the limited site initially approved (Birmingham Central Library, Archives Division, ‘Proceedings of the Commissioners for Paving . . ., 1828-37’, meetings of 5 April and 2 May 1831). One of Charles Barry’s three sketch ideas for Birmingham Town Hall (Archives, 617/2/2) was also for a Corinthian temple on a high podium, but access was to be by steps to the west side of the double-depth hexastyle portico facing south over Paradise Street, a device somewhat akin to the lateral steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.

84 The capitals of Birmingham Town Hall are closely derived from the those of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, but the abacus, architrave and cornice (except for the modillions), whilst preserving the Roman temple’s mouldings, lack its enrichments. This was no doubt due to the financial difficulties into which the building soon ran (Hansom, Statement p. 6, indicated that the Castor and Pollux order was more costly to produce than other alternatives). The height of Birmingham Town Hall’s podium has been recorded as 23 feet, that of its columns and entablature as 45 feet, and that of its pediment as 15 feet — a total height of 83 feet (see Evinson, D., ‘Joseph Hansom’, (MA thesis, University of London, 1966), p. 73 Google Scholar). Taylor’s and Cresy’s equivalent measurements of the Temple of Castor and Pollux were 22 feet 3 inches 8 lines for the podium, and 61 feet 3 inches for the columns and entablature — a total of 83 feet 6 inches and 8 lines (Taylor and Cresy, Antiquities, 11, plate 85). The principal difference in dimension between the two buildings, therefore, was the height of the columns and entablatures, Hansom scaling his order down to almost exactly three-quarters of the height of the Roman prototype. Finally, although the podium of the Temple of Castor and Pollux had a solid core, the 1816-18 excavation had revealed the existence of an arched support between the travertine piers beneath the columns (Figs. 6 and 8). In Taylor’s and Cresy’s section (Fig. 8, extreme left) the blankness of this arch provided a likely precedent for Hansom’s treatment of the window and door arched openings in the podium of Birmingham Town Hall (Fig. 17).

85 Evinson, ‘Hansom’, pp. 69-70.

86 Hautecoeur, L., Histoire de l’Architecture Classique en France, 7 vols (Paris, 1943–57), VI, p. 18 Google Scholar. According to Hautecoeur, v, p. 207, Vignon’s design ‘logeait [les bains de] Caracalla dans la Maison carrée de Nîmes’. The order of the Madeleine is indeed similar to that of the Maison Carrée, especially with its richly decorated frieze.

87 See, for example, Amesbury House, Wiltshire, by T. Hopper (1834-40); St George’s Hall, Liverpool, by H. L. Elmes (1841-54), where the entablature has Greek characteristics but the columns and capitals Republican and early Imperial Roman features; Great Thornton Street Chapel, Hull (1843) by F. H. Lock wood (a pupil of Peter Robinson) and Thomas Allom, now demolished (see Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture, 11, Chapter 4, Fig. 11); Commercial Bank of Scotland, George St, Edinburgh (1844) by David Rhind, who had visited Italy about 1831 (see Gow, I., ‘David Rhind’, in Brown, R., ed., The Architectural Outsiders (London, 1985), 153-71Google Scholar).

88 Hansom, Statement, p. 6. See also Williamson, R. Ross, ‘Joseph Aloysius Hansom’, The Architectural Review, 80 (September 1936), 117–119, p. 117Google Scholar.

89 Hansom, Statement, p. 6.

90 The height and diameter of the columns of the Temple of ‘Vesta’ at Tivoli (one of the smallest of all Roman Corinthian orders) is less than half that of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in Rome (see Jones, M. Wilson, ‘Designing the Roman Corinthian Order’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2 (1989), 35–69, pp. 67 and 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

91 For an assessment of the limitations of Soane’s impact on younger architects of the 1815-37 period see C. Webster, ‘The Influence of Sir John Soane’, Late Georgian Classicism, 28-44. When the commissioners submitted Hansom’s revised design for further criticism to John Foster, he immediately recommended a return to the order of the Temple of Castor and Pollux (Hansom, Statement, p. 6). Foster had travelled extensively in Greece, partly with Cockerell, between 1809 and 1816 when, according to Colvin (Biographical Dictionary, p. 317) he returned to England and began work on St. Michael’s Church, Liverpool. But he must surely have been thejohn Foster with whom Basevi had dinner in Rome in April 1817 and who reported that travelling in Greece was safer than travelling in Italy (SM, ‘Basevi Transcript’, p. 109).