Tracing Architecture looks at the impact that knowledge of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and British architecture had on aesthetic attitudes and architectural design. It explores the changing relationship between text and image in an era before the introduction of mass mechanical reproduction.

Introduction. Tracing Architecture: the aesthetics of antiquarianism (Dana Arnold and Stephen Bending). Monuments and Texts: Antiquarianism and the beauty of antiquity (Maria Grazia Lolla). Facts or Fragments? Visual histories in the age of mechanical reproduction (Dana Arnold). The Sources and Fortunes of Piranesi’s Archaeological Illustrations (Susan M. Dixon). Antiquity and Improvement in the National Landscape: the Buck’s views of antiquities 1726-42 (Andrew Kennedy). Data, Documentation and Display in Eighteenth-Century Investigations of Exeter Cathedral (Sam Smiles). Every Man is Naturally an Antiquarian: Francis Grose and polite antiquities (Stephen Bending). Voyage: Dominique-Vivant Denon and the transference of images of Egypt (Abigail Harrison Moore). Specimens of Antient Sculpture: Imperialism and the decline of art (Andrew Ballantyne). Index

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.