Stuart and Revett: Their Literary and Architectural Careers

Abstract

James Stuart and Nicholas Revett first became generally known in the artistic world through that survey of the ancient buildings of Greece and Pola upon which they were engaged from 1750 to 1755, and the results of which were afterwards published as the Antiquities of Athens. The "Proposal" of the scheme must have been fairly widely known, because it was published no less than four times before the appearance, in 1762, of the first volume of the work itself, three times in England, and once in Italy. (By Colonel George Gray in 1751, by Samuel Ball in 1752, by Dawkins and Wood at some slightly later date, in London; and by Consul Smith, in 1753, at Venicel). In this prospectus Stuart and Revett stated their intention of recording systematically what yet remained of the ancient monuments of Greece in the same way that "Rome, who borrowed her Arts, and frequently her Artificers, from Greece, has by means of Serlio, Palladio, Santo Bartoli, and other Ingenious men, preserved the memory of the most Excellent Sculptures, and Magnificent Edifices, which once adorned her," and doubted not "but a Work so much wanted will meet with the Approbation of all those Gentlemen, who are Lovers of Antiquity, or have a taste for what is Excellent in these Arts, as we are assured that those Artists, who aim at Perfection must be infinitely more pleased, and better instructed, the nearer they can draw their Examples, from the Fountain-head."2 From the first, therefore, the work was intended not only to attract antiquarians, but actually to influence current practice in building, and its conception was a perfectly logical development in that movement towards a purer architecture which had led Inigo Jones to seek inspiration in Palladio's designs, and Burlington to go back still further to Palladio's antique sources. So natural, indeed, did such a step seem, that after the Greek revival really got under way in the early nineteenth century, Stuart was hailed as the spiritual heir of Jones and Burlington, and acquired a posthumous fame which was probably greater than his contemporary one. Gwilt, in his Encyclopedia of Architecture, (first published 1842), says: "The chasteness and purity which the two last-named architects (Stuart and Revett) had, with some success, endeavoured to introduce into the buildings of England, and in which their zeal had enlisted many artists, had to contend against the opposite and vicious taste of Robert Adam, a fashionable architect whose eye had been ruined by the corruptions of the worst period of Roman Art." James Elmes, writing in the Civil Engineer in 1847, says that "no event that ever occurred in the history of architecture in England, and thence throughout all Europe, produced so sudden, decided and beneficial an effect as did the works of James Stuart."3 The fact that Josiah Taylor