Tracing Architecture: The Aesthetics of Antiquarianism

Innovative forms of visual representation in the long eighteenth century were made possible through the medium of print. In turn, they enabled the dissemination of knowledge about the ancient world and its relationship to the ever-refining set of cultural values applied to and associated with the past. Tracing Architecture discusses the study of the ancient world - including Egyptian, Greek, Roman and British antiquities - through the medium of print as a Europe-wide phenomenon, where the visual language of the printed image transcended national boundaries. This book allows the reader to explore the relationship between the international currency of ‘antiquity’ and indigenous traditions of aesthetic philosophy and architectural design. The importance of this and the changing relationship between text and image is also considered, thereby raising questions about the relationship between the mass-produced image and the original, in an era before Walter Benjamin’s age of mechanical reproduction. Tracing Architecture is a fascinating study of the relationship between architecture, antiquity and aesthetics in a European context. It will be of interest to those studying and working in the fields of art history, architecture, classics and ancient history.