Kitty, thank you. On November 28, 16, 60, the Royal Society was founded in London with the motto Nullius and Verver, take no one's word for it.
It quickly became England's principal forum for the practise and dissemination of experimental,
natural and mechanical philosophies through 17th century intellectual categories that we would that would become modern science.
Its early membership included some of the heroes of the scientific revolution Robert Boyle, Robert Hawkins, Isaac Newton.
And I show you here that society's greatest hits mobile zap, Newton's prank, IBM, Mathematica and Lovenox micrograph here.
But its early is the society's intellectual mandate, extended far beyond the familiarly scientific and its meetings and its publications.
It promoted research into phenomena that would now like comfortably outside the scientific corpus.
This included material of an antiquarian, anthropological and philological nature, as well as that relating to surveying and architecture.
Indeed, the presence in the society of intellectuals such as Hooke, Christopher Wren,
John Evelyn and John Obree mean that it was the principal forum in England through which architectural and antiquarian material was disseminated.
Up until the founding of the Society of Antiquarians in 1787 zounds.
To talk about one particular moments in the Royal Society's early engagement with both architecture and the Antique,
its publication of the first account in the English language of the architectural topography of Athens.
This had been written by Francis Burnham, a Royal Society member, former diplomat and traveller, and I'm afraid no portraits of either Vernon.
So you don't have to put up with the fact that a whole paper on somebody don't know what it looked like.
I'm sorry, Vernon. The kinds of Athens is in the form of a letter sent to the Royal Society from Turkey and sixteen seventy five.
It was published in society's journal. The Philosophical Transactions. The next year, Fern was in Paradise Observer and Recorder of Ancient Buildings,
and his account included brief but illuminating descriptions of the RSA on the Cecil and the Parthenon.
The are written over 10 years before the bombing of the temple by Venetian Army and sixteen eighty seven significantly Vernons.
That's a pre dated, more famous early publications on Athens, and in particular I am referring to those by George Wheeler and Jakob Spon,
published in the decade after Vernon, neither of which were related to the Royal Society in any way.
We'll all be talking about that a bit today. So today I want to explore Vernon.
Sure. Publication in detail as well as his travel journal, which survives and published in the Royal Society's Library.
Together, they reveal much about the level of engagement the English scholars operated on with regards to ancient Greek architecture in this period.
Verlan was amongst the very first Englishman to see temples such as the Parthenon firsthand and in situ.
Thus, both the accounts and the Journal demonstrate Vernons unfamiliarity with Greek classical form.
His writings also point to the ways in which English authors began the process of explaining his apparent deviations from the Roman norm.
Vernons account is also noted for the repeated notable for the repeated emphasis that he put on the accuracy of his recordings,
as well as his own competence as a witness. In this respect, I would argue that has exposure to natural historical discourse.
Prior to his visit to Athens, when his description of the ancient ruins was remarkably similar to accounts of naturally
or experimentally produced knowledge that had been published also in the transactions.
I think then his writings also raise interesting questions about the nature of accuracy in antiquarian publications in the period.
But the most interesting aspect, the van, and I think is what Vernons writings is, what they pre-empted for many years after his death.
The buildings that he would first record would come to have a profound influence on the development of British architectural design.
In many respects, value might be seen as the very earliest profit of the Greek revival in Britain.
So who was Vernon? He was born in London and 16, 17, so 16, 37 and was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church College Oxford.
In both instances, he was a contemporary of the future curator of the Royal Society, the scientist and architect Robert Hooke.
Vernon and Hooke would remain friends throughout their adult lives, and they shared mutual interests, including architecture.
Hook was, incidentally, an architect as well as a scientist after Oxford and made an educational visit to Italy.
And he was he was in Rome in sixteen sixty seven before embarking on a diplomatic career.
He went to Paris in sixteen sixty nine as part of the English embassy in the French capital then,
and largely neglected his official duties in favour of immersing himself in the
Parisian intellectual world that he befriended to the principal astronomers of the day,
Giandomenico Cassini and Cristián Horgan's, and through them kept up to date with the activities of the KIPP, the Academy.
You out to see sciences in the city. This information he relayed back to Henry.
But the secretary of the Royal Society in London had a series of letters that
have recently been published as part of the Oldenberg correspondence project.
Off to Paris, Vernon himself returned to London, where his services to Oldenberg in the society let him being elected a member in 16 72.
It was also around this time that he began planning an ambitious, self-funded journey through the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The impetus for this journey seems to have been his longstanding interest in ancient culture,
which is revealed in his earlier letters from Paris and Rome. But this new journey will be a lot more hazardous than those earlier trips abroad.
He was proposing to travel into Ottoman health Greece, where very few English people had been before him.
Indeed, he would become one of the very first modern Englishman to set foot in Athens.
So his Vernons journey made on a map by me, but then left London in 16 73 and sailed from Venice in early 16th.
Seventy five across the Adriatic to the Dalmatian coast. He reached this in July, where he began keeping his travel channel.
His companions at this stage of journey were an English traveller called Sir Giles East Coast, which I can't find any information about really,
as well as Spohn and Wheeler, who began their more famous voyages in the eastern Mediterranean alongside Vernon.
The party was in Corfu in late July 16 75 and subsequently travelled to the Ionian Islands to Zanti, which they reached on the fourth of August.
Here van, an east court parted company with Bond and Wheeler, who sailed through the Aegean to Constantinople.
They would return to Athens the following year. Instead, vanity's court went directly to Athens and from that left the currents and the Peloponnese,
which they did a little tour of a little circular, all on the 24th of September.
During their stay in the town of Vitrine, it's there on the Gulf of Currents.
East Coast fell ill and died, leaving Vernon to return alone to Athens via Delfi through its October and November 16 75.
He resided in the city, sketching numerous ancient ruins and writing their measurements down in his journal.
He also spent time with the few Western Europeans that lived locally after leaving the city.
Vernon spent a month in the six cities where he was robbed of most of his possessions by pirates.
By the end of seventy 75, he had reached smatter in Turkey and from there send a number of letters back to Paris and London.
This included the letter to Oldenburg that was to be published in the transactions.
He then travelled to Constantine Constantinople and from there through Turkey and into the Middle East.
In September 60 76, he was killed by a group of locals near Isfahan in modern day Iran,
apparently in an argument over the ownership of a penknife, which is presumably one airport it survived with him.
Which is why my little map shows in one way voyage.
News of his death reached London the following May and was recorded by his friend Hook in the last diary,
who claimed that he heard the ill news of Paul Francis Vernon's death killed by Turks at Scimitars.
As evidence in Varner's letters and journals suggest that had he survived,
Vernon's intention was to travel as far as India and then to return to London by sea.
In spite of the distance he travelled before his violent death,
Vernon's travel journal somehow made it back to London and was found amongst hoax papers upon the latter's death in 1783,
and has a page from this document, which is remarkably well-preserved given its provenance,
reveals that London's interest during his time in Greece and Turkey were predominately antiquarian.
Thus, he recorded Greek and Latin inscriptions as well as any any interesting ancient buildings he saw.
It seems to Vernon's intention to publish significant parts of his journal upon his return.
And in his letter he wrote that Athens, quote, deserves a whole book to discourse of it.
Well, which now I have neither the time nor room to do, but I have memorials of by me, of all I saw,
which one day, if it please God, I may show you by the law, as it is apparent to this document, unfortunate.
His untimely death meant that the only record of the voids that entered the public sphere
was the letter which was read by Oldenberg to the Royal Society on the 16th of March 16th,
76,
at which quite diverse members expressed their desires that this letter of Mr. Vernon might be printed and quotes and appeared in the transactions.
On the 24th of April 16 76, one of Europe's premier intellectual journals.
The transactions have been created in sixteen 65 to Powder's research and discoveries generated in and around the society.
In reality, it included only a small proportion of the letters and reports that were read to the group and
selection for publication dependent on their being an informal consensus amongst the members.
That piece is important enough to release into the wider domain in the case of Vernons, that there was little doubt that this was the case.
In fact, one of the principal reasons for the publication of the letter was the general
prevalence of material relating to ancient architecture in the periodical.
This often took the form of smaller parts of larger travellers' accounts that featured regularly.
In particular, when an author was writing from a location in which the ruins of ancient buildings could be found.
They often included accounts of these, sometimes with measurements and very rarely with illustrations.
Then letter was not illustrated on. Some of these were from parts of Britain with surviving Roman ruins.
Places such as York, Washington, later, or from the Mediterranean and Near East.
For the time being. He was a he was the most extraordinary image that the transactions ever published showing architecture.
This is these are the ruins of Palmyra in Syria.
They were published in the transactions in sixteen ninety five as part of a traveller's account or series of.
The case of the Syrian desert should manage to untie me.
Time to talk back to them. So knowledge of ancient culture, including architecture, was hugely prised but prised by the society.
And as a result, the publication of these accounts is an important part of the content of the early philosophical transactions,
as Oldenberg, the Journal's editor, until his death in 16 77, observed in an early volume quotes.
This is our main business, as well as to retrieve all valuable antiquities as a supply.
Fresh discoveries to recover good old helps,
as well as to devise new owner artifices designed and appropriated unappropriated to unlock the repositories of nature,
to draw out the most concealed operations and rarities,
to produce them with their best advantages and in their fairest ornaments for all good occasions.
And whatever we find excellent in old Greece or Rome, or more ancient monarchies, or in any one more part happy part of the world that endue seasons,
communicate all over the world to as many as have the ingenuity to give them a hearty entertainment.
Therefore, and in line with the Roz's. So I, I'm not quite.
Therefore, one in line with the Royal Society. Broader social concerns, information about ancient culture had an important utilitarian function.
It would provide old helps for new problems.
In the case of architecture, it would improve the base level of architectural knowledge in England at the time.
Contemporary with the Oldenberg passage I've just read,
Ross Society members such as John Evelyn were arguing that contemporary English architects were on the whole,
largely ignorant of the rules of classical architecture. As Evelyn puts it, in sixteen sixty four,
the mistress and absurdities in our modern structures see chiefly from our busy and gothic trifling
flings in the composition of the five odas what was needed claiming claimed Evelyn was a safe,
expedient and perfect guide to ancient architecture in which the noblest remains of antiquity
are accurately measured and conspicuously demonstrated and the rules are laid down,
end quote. This then, was the context of Varner's letter and one of the reasons why it was published,
containing, as it dates, accurate measurements of numerous ancient ruins.
But this is not his eagerness to publish the van, and I can also stem from its novelty.
As Oldenberg had argued, information about ancient culture needed to be harvested and safely and accurately
relayed back to London from both quote's remote and nera parts of the world.
And novelty and exoticism were often the driving factor behind the society's interest in travel writing.
Previously unknown phenomena in Sorry in the world of the Aligarh Society, previously unknown phenomena had an important epistemic status.
Knowledge from different locations have the potential to shape the direction of the society's
interest because the structure of the group's knowledge was open to change and was not fixed.
Vernon's letter demonstrates that architectural knowledge could be included in this in providing the kinds of important ancient buildings that
the community had little prior knowledge of his lesser enhanced and developed the community's knowledge rather than just consolidating it.
In this respect was particularly suited to the mandate of the transactions as it can,
then brand new information relating to valuable antiquities that previously dropped out of Western European knowledge for weapons,
that it was also an important moment in English, architectural and antiquarian culture as a whole.
Up to this point, English knowledge of ancient architecture was almost exclusively limited to Roman material.
As a result of European editions of ancient texts such as Daniel Barbaras fifteen fifty six Italian
additional Vitruvius and Paros French translation of the same text and 16 73 trade show here.
That's the Barbro Editions paper. English.
Our intellectuals were increasingly familiar with the principles of Roman architecture, although,
as Evelyn's just told us, the majority of English architectural practitioners didn't know this stuff.
People like even Vernon did, and some of them, including even in that van, and even managed to travel to Italy and see Roman ruins firsthand.
But Vernons travellers in Greece brought to light forms of ancient architecture that were completely
novel to 17th century English scholars and not really included in any of these publications.
There's a Greece rather than right in his letter.
But it was clear that Athens is it and has its architecture have come as something of a surprise to him.
He told Oldenberg and the society that it was, quote, the most wealthy city to be seen for antiquities of any and have yet been at,
end quote, implying that they would not necessarily have known this.
This observation highlights the genuine novelty of Athens as an intellectual subject matter.
In late 17th century England,
and it's important to stress the paucity of English people's knowledge of the city in the years before Vernon and subsequently Spon and Wheeler.
Although Greek statues or these Roman copies of Greek statues were beginning to appear in large numbers in Western Europe and England,
the animal models remaining, for example, which were acquired in 17th century images of Greek cities in their architecture were extremely rare.
Knowledge of Athens and its buildings was, on the whole, still limited to Pisania second century accounts and an unreliable 16 75 French text.
Discuss in detail later. Any new knowledge that came to light about a city that played such a crucial role in ancient history,
yet remains so elusive in the modern period, was a noteworthy moment. And Vernon's recordings also expand the community's knowledge of ancient
architecture beyond the pages of the principal surviving source and the subjects.
Vitruvius, of course. In the first century B.C.,
the Roman authors treatment of Greek architecture was brief and confusing when
compared to his account of the architecture of his native city and its empire.
And although Vitruvius was clear that there was a difference between the architecture of Greek and Roman buildings,
he gave very few, if any, details of how that distant difference manifested itself.
As we shall see, this is a problem that and keep coming back to when he himself confronted and recorded the senior buildings.
His account, therefore, had the potential to advance the English intellectual communitys knowledge
of ancient architecture beyond that contained and surviving textual sources.
However, I did want to introduce a quick caveat. We have to be cautious in seeing Vernon and his fellow travellers.
Epistemic conquest of Greece and its architecture as too big a step is important to remember that this was still a pre neoclassical period.
Now, while they had widely held notion that Greek buildings were either the fountainhead or
the apogee of classical architecture would not be formulated until the 18th century.
There was little sense in late 17th century writings of an awareness of a development from architectural style,
from the Greek period to the Romans, only that they might be different in some way.
In fact, chronology and dating where she the most observers of ancient Greek architecture in this period either ignored or stumbled over.
This is best evidenced by both Spon and Wheeler's rather infamous dating of the pediments
statues of the Parthenon to the Adriatic period that he himself said very little,
either in his letter or in his travel journal regarding the dates of any buildings he encountered
or that place within a broader scheme of classical architectural development in the ancient world.
Nonetheless, he was aware through his own observations, that the buildings of Athens displayed marked differences from Roman examples.
They were also, in many cases, better preserved. Indeed, Venice believed that Athens was the most worthy to be seen for antiquities,
reflected the fact that many of its structures were considerably more intact in sixteen seventy five than they are today.
For example, he thought the Parthenon was as well preserved as the pantheon in Rome, which of course it isn't.
But. But it was then nonetheless, the city that van and spent two months in and six and seventy five was still a very different one,
not only from today but from passiveness as Athens of 1500 years earlier, and under which it pretty much all I have to go on before he gets there.
I'm here is a rough,
not particularly accurate sketch of the Acropolis in the 60s 70s produced by French draughtsmen for south of the Acropolis, was now a castle.
It had huge defensive walls.
They've been built by Frankish occupants in the 14th century and reinforced by Ottoman forces in the years since they took the city and for 14 58,
many of the buildings are ancient authors described had disappeared or had been altered dramatically.
For example, the proper layout, which is just out of shock. It was described by seniors as unrivalled for its beauty.
But by this time was incorporated into the defences and was largely obscured by the 26 metre high Frankish tower.
This thing that have been built up in the 14th century.
The other Copley's temples of fell just as badly erect, say, on have been converted into a church in the Middle Ages.
And according to Wheeler, was in the 60s. 70S, uses a harem for the Ottoman commander of the temple, have sort of the castle, the temple of Athena.
Nike was still standing and was amongst the best preserved buildings on the site.
But it's used as a paid magazine by the garrison meant that it was largely inaccessible.
Vernon noted in his journal that one could only view the front of it.
Even the Parthenon had been dramatically altered since antiquity around this sorry, no clear image.
But this is a 20th century reconstruction of what the Parthenon like in the in the mid 17th century.
Essentially, before the Venetians blew it up around the turn of the 7th century,
the Parthenon had been converted into a church involving fairly drastic changes.
And then into a mosque in the 14th 60s, which was a less invasive procedure in Venice.
Time it had a minaret. See that clearly been a Christ that had previously been a Christian watchtower.
The ruminations had been closed off halfway up the interior.
And then to its right, close up halfway up the interior, which included the 12th century apse,
which at any see in this image was a jumble of Christian mosaics and windows, punched the horribly through ancient freezes.
Travellers interested in the ancient architecture of the city therefore had to disentangle the ancient ruins from more modern buildings.
They also had to avoid the attention of the Ottoman garrison on the Acropolis, who was suspicious of any Western,
is viewing Lassard and measuring their fortifications lest the information be passed to the Venetians.
Given what would occur in 697, they were probably right to hold such feeds for then.
And however, it meant that much of his activities on the Acropolis took place outside of daylight and at least once under musket fire from above.
But in spite of these trying circumstances, Fulham managed to take measurements of all the major buildings and the sites.
These he related to. Oldenberg in society in the 16th seventy five letter,
which began with an account of the Parthenon giving all its important measurements
down to this conference of the pillars and the distance of the Intercon elimination.
He also showed Oldenberg that he had taken all the dimensions within and those are the proneness in the porticos.
But they are too long for a letter. And here I've got this is a this is from Vallens published letter.
These are the measurements. These are some of the measurements he gets in the travel journal.
There's more than this as well, actually. And basically see extensively.
There's a lot more in the journal that are taken down compared to what ended up in the letter.
Vulnerable, I gave a brief description of the freeze and pediment carving in the latter. But again, his journal contained a much richer account.
Next, Vernon turns to the well-preserved FESSEY on the Agora, which he noted was like the Parthenon Doric building of white marble.
He again gives measurements. He turned to the Kadlec monuments of Socrates,
which he decided was a temple dedicated to Hercules based on the representation Danny got in the car freeze.
He also described the time of the winds, an octagon with the figures of eight winds, which are large and of good workmanship, according to to Vernon.
He also talked about the Iraq say on and I'll do I'll deal with Iraq found later because he has his own particular take on that.
So I want to explore in detail etal. He discusses the various buildings built by Heydrich in the city and what was left of the Panama Ethnic Stadium.
He also discussed the Odean of charities S.A.S., which again I will return to later because it's a really important building in
the letter for all of these brief measurements were given and as it showed,
only a fraction of that contained in the journal. There were various reasons for providing his correspondence with these measurements.
On the one hand, I think they provided information architects, architecture scholars might have found useful.
And they also increased the community's knowledge of the dimensions of ancient temple architecture.
But they also argue part of a standard natural historical textual apparatus that then deployed to make his account seem more credible.
In the latter, he assured his readers that they could rely on his measurements as exact a half a foot.
This explicit reassurance of the accuracy of his recordings betrays Bannon's previous exposure
to the content of the philosophical transactions and civil society literature in general.
Accurate maturation was, of course, important to any kinds of architecture in a period, but in the society's journal it was particularly appropriate.
As a historian of science, Stephen Shapen has observed, numerical precision was highly prised by the society,
not just because it yielded important information about phenomena architectural,
natural or otherwise, but also because it endowed the text with a layer of circumstance reality.
Precise measurements were much more plausible than Vago approximated accounts of the dimensions of things.
Thus, in Vernon's case, the apparent precision of his many measurements and his assurance to that effect was evidence.
The hidden view, the buildings in person, as we will see. It was particularly pertinent for him to do this in the case of Athens.
In fact, Vernon's letter contained other devices that enhance credibility through circumstantial reality.
Again, these point to his prior knowledge of raw society literature.
For example, in the transactions, his letter was published in in its original form as a letter,
complete with the address to Oldenberg and Vernons excuse for not writing to him earlier.
It also contains a significant amount of circumstantial detail, including information about travel arrangements and the fact that Van had lost
all his previous correspondence with Oldenberg when he was robbed by pirates.
This was common in travel accounts in the period and in more society related travel literature in particular,
a certain kind of scene setting such as this was often included to emphasise as an author had indeed been to the destination described indeed
and his travel journal that he can remember he intended to publish on his return van and made further provisions for circumstantial reporting.
Hey result, he resorted to another tactic common in our society writings,
the recording of phenomena as discrete events rather than generalised statements.
As the historian Peter Dair has noted, society members like to record the results of experiments as an actual event that had taken place at a
specific time and place Funspot van and applied this method to his archaeological recording in Athens.
For example, when he wrote down his measurements of the festival, he recorded the dates he had taken and down,
as well as the identity of witnesses, noting that the measures quotes were taken on Friday, August the 30th, with Mr. Roundoff and Mr Giles.
Mr Giles is that that died halfway through the journey.
Mr Randall is a type of Bernard Randolph. He's an English the English consonance man that comes across the Adriatic to join them for a week.
This grounded the act of measuring in reality.
It has happened at a specific time and was witnessed by a pair of trustworthy English gentlemen, presumably.
Had he been able to publish the journal,
he would have gone to similar lengths in the text to describe the actual circumstances under which is recording's took place.
The letter also follows Royal Society conventions by including a certain amount of mathematically driven analysis.
This manifests itself in the personal measurements and here we can see in calculating
that the illumination was one of the quarter times the diameter of the columns,
which says that I actually could go to the journal now.
We note that he worked at the diameter of the columns by dividing the circumference circumference by PI.
Like all good mathematicians. So in this sentence is nasty 17th century handwriting.
But he notes down the circumference of the pillars, then he's writes.
Hence diameter, which is just him doing his little calculation as opposed to actually measuring the diameter itself,
which would be a lot harder for his use of mathematics, albeit on a fairly simple level, is common in both the letter and the travel journal.
Indeed, he seems to have identified himself as a mathematician.
First and foremost, Ya'acov Spon, who travelled with Vernon and would himself measure the Athenian ruins the following year,
noted both but his mathematical skills and his knowledge of architecture, calling the Englishman a skilled mathematician and architect.
The later French traveller Jesse Pete on the 24 also described Vernon as a learnt mathematician rather than a traveller or antiquarian persay.
But his apparent precision sorry presentation of himself as a mathematician and his awareness of the
conventions of raw society literature mattered to his Athens account being compared favourably to other,
more overtly scientific publications in the Journal.
In the preface to the volume of the transactions that contained the letter, its editor, Oldenberg,
discussed the role of the diligent travel writer and recorder of architecture contrast,
contrasting that figure with more quite romantic authors and quotes in particular.
Oldenberg praised, quote,
those learnt inquisitive writers who have searched deep into the antiquities which have happened in the places they undertook to describe.
And we must acknowledge many excellent, ingenious and truly philosophical histories of the architecture and grandeur and situation of palaces,
cities, Citadel's fortifications, Tyne's bridges, etc. In all, it is that designated natural history.
We have more needs to for severe, full and punctual truth than of romance or panegyric.
Some travel writers, Oldenberg noted, were inclined to write romantic evocations of places, but not those of the Royal Society.
Instead, Van Sabira kinds of Athens's example, according to Oldenberg, of natural history.
It was an allergist, an accurate reports of natural phenomena that appeared regularly in the journal.
But Oldenberg had another reason for contrasting Vernons full and punctual truth with other
texts that quotes do rather belong to arts and artifices and quotes for Vernons letter.
Besides providing measurements of the architecture of Athens also confronted directly a particularly pernicious example of just such a romance.
As I've already outlined, there are a number of reasons why there are numerous reasons why the society was so keen to publish the letter.
But one, I weighed all the others. I think this related to a single building discussed in the text.
Neither the Parthenon nor the erect sound, but a structure viewed with considerably less reverence today.
The Odean of Hebrides attackers built in 161 A.D. on the South Slope of the Acropolis site in the Roman period.
Essentially Verm, like all authors on Athens until the 19th century, referred to this building as the theatre of Baccus,
thinking that it was the seizure of diagnosis referred to by spiciness.
This would later the passengers as the age of dinosaurs would later be revealed to be on the theatre over here to the south of the idea.
Which is a much like earlier earlier building, but in this period, so ruin almost like you hardly see it.
So everybody, including 19th century authors, thinks this is the theatre of Bacchus.
Regardless. This is the last building discussed in Vernons published.
Athans accounts and as he had done with his predecessors. He set about recording its measurements.
And this is again expressed mathematically.
So he's as the semi diameter, which is the right sign of the DME circle, which makes the theatre is about 150 feet.
However, he quickly broke off in this to address a serious problem that he had identified
in the existing European Corpus of knowledge on ancient Athenian architecture.
And on this building in particular, this realisation was of such importance that I think it renders Burmans latter
amongst the most valuable architectural documents in circulation and 60s,
70s London. Although I have repeatedly stressed the novelty of Athenian architecture to Vernon and his English contemporaries,
his kind of Athens had not been the first to enter the London public sphere.
That distinction belonged to a French publication called Athens and shown a NIVEL, which had been published in sixteen seventy five the year before.
Vernons letter reached London and also named George Gear designer George in its gay
related A Tale of a Voice to Athens that had purportedly been undertaken by his brother,
who he calls the guillotine. It contains descriptions of various Athenian buildings and the topography of the city.
In reality, however, Gidday had never been to Athens and furthermore, his brother did not even exist.
Instead, the book was a combination of extracts taken from a contemporary and very brief the kinds of Athens provided by a group of cap,
French capital and monks alongside pieces of fiction. And it is majority fiction.
Although it was not an unnecessary unusual for travel writing in this period to be based on accounts of others as opposed to first hand experience,
his book was unusually presented a first person travel narrative purported to be genuine.
As a result, a number of European scholars assumed that the King's book was trustworthy and have come from direct knowledge of the city.
We know from his Journal of Unem possessed a copy of Kia when he visited the city,
and he must have quickly realised that the French text was inaccurate.
He also knew that no one back in London or Paris, for that matter, would have been aware of this fact.
Vernon is the first person to get to Athens, post the publication of this of his text.
To Vernon, the most obvious example of glazed gaze, disingenuousness,
disingenuousness was in his description and representation of the Odean of Paradies Atticus.
The only building illustrated in the French text. I'm not gonna.
Yeah, I'm saving's up. It's quite funny.
He immediately warned Oldenberg and the society Mr Mesure delegate gay in that book he has written of Athens this, this and says it has to do.
And this is sorry. This is a quote from Vernons letter. Published letter.
Had it done so, Michelle Gay Gay has made a cut of the theatre which he calls as a Baccus, which is a mere fancy and an invention of his own.
Nothing like the natural one which I judge he did not know.
I give you this one hint that you may not be deceived by that book, which is wide from the truth, as will appear to anybody who sees the reality,
though to one who has not seen it, it seems plausibly written right here is your illustration, which is completely nonsensical in some respects,
although perhaps in effect not shows a building made up of a large semicircular substructure reminiscent of Roman theatres
with a of ovations that seemed to me to be in look like a sort of amalgam of the Colosseum and a theatre of Marcella's,
although if anyone spot direct source for it was almost certainly Roman, whatever it is,
it had a scheme Fromm's with a pitched roof and Doric plaster's and an imagined perspective backdrop, which is brilliant.
So in a go James style, and perhaps most ridiculously,
a square stage and wooden balustrade that resembled early modern playhouses is ignorance of the actual innovations.
I mean Crude Keanna and show it next to the building. Not to mention so its ignorance of the actual elevation's.
Not to mention the fact that the seating of the real theatre was cut into the slopes of the
Acropolis confirmed van suspicion that neither he nor his fictional brother had been to the site.
I should say that this seating is this is 1950s seating, but in valence time it had the remains of its Athenian, of its ancient seating.
But it gets cut into the to the side of the of the hill feathers exposure.
This duplicity was, I argue, hugely significant in the world of the Aliu.
Our society exposing false information was as important as collecting accurate knowledge of phenomena.
The gay account and reconstruction were epistemically dangerous.
They had the potential to cause considerable damage within the architectural knowledge community, as Varnum was well aware.
Very few people in Western Europe had first hand of the ruins of our first hand knowledge of the ruins of Athens,
and there was a real possibility that Lanard architects and scholars might have been duped by a seemingly plausible book.
Perhaps this may have even happened to Vernons friend Hooke, who recorded in his diary that Hippolyte borrowed the key a text from an acquaintance in
June sixteen seventy five and then subsequently bought a copy for himself a week later,
which he then learnt. He then lent to Robert Boyle. This took place eight months before Vallens letter.
London and Hooke's eagerness to buy and subsequently circulate the book suggests that he may have admired it.
There are certainly no hints in Hooke's Diary that he or Boyle, for that matter, suspect that the French are to be disingenuous in any way for Vernon.
And the Royal Society then gives tax presented a particularly troubling example of mendacious information masquerading.
As matter of fact, a plausible untruth such as this could spread like a virus in the knowledge community
and lead to a serious loss of reputation and credibility for anyone taken in.
In this case, the stakes were particularly high.
Like many ancient belling types, we can Roman theatres, which were of great interest to architects in this period,
and surviving Roman states that we use as source material for new buildings.
When, for example, used his knowledge of Roman theatres in his design for the Sheldonian Theatre in sixteen sixty four.
The consequences would have been extremely serious if an architect as respected as Rannoch had in good
faith used a shoddy reconstruction of the idea of heritage massacres as an architectural source.
Therefore, Venz account was a hugely important remedy to a dangerously unreliable text,
and the Royal Society's eagerness to publish it is understandable.
The minutes for the meeting when Varner's letter was read out reveal the group's overall concern in this respect.
And they say that so there was read a large Lassard by Mr Francis Vernon and wished
to giving a summary account of his observations and taking notice of Miss Your Dad.
Gay's description of Athens as containing many mistakes and faults.
Falsities, though, plausibly written quite so. The minutes of the side pick up on the parent plausibility of Geass.
The society agreed then that the apparent plausibility of the text rendered is a particular threat.
This is also the reaction of Origin.
Stelle, one of Oldenburg's Parisian correspondents who'd been another to receive a letter from VUN and warning him about the book,
just l wrote to Oldenberg. Telling him that Mr. Verlan quotes has written to me from Smyrna his adventures and his description of Athens,
where he is well remarked on everything with exactness.
Athens and Teekay Modern, of which much has been made, is not real and is full of mistakes and quite.
Just now noticed the seriousness by which some scholars had treated guey,
including perhaps hot, but he also highlighted antithetical exactness of Vernons account.
As is apparent from these sources, Vernons revelation sent sent a convulsion for the European Knowledge Community.
It was up to the Royal Society and its mouthpiece, the philosophical transactions, to remedy the situation by circulating Bernhard's news.
The publication of this revelation had a number of immediately consequences. The first of which seems to have been hooked.
Got rid of his copy of KIA. It was not present in the sale catalogue of his library.
It was compiled after his death. Secondly, it's likely to remove the removal of the illustration of hayrides.
Atticus from the English translation of E.A. came about as the result of Vernons exposer and this translation of pad as the letter arrives in London.
I wonder whether it would have ever even taken place. Had it not had the letter arrived earlier.
This translation did not include the illustration, nor did it mention in any way.
The third consequence was the spot. And Wheeler, when they returned from their travels later in sixteen seventy six, went to ten on the French text.
In doing so, they both invoked Vernon and his letter.
Spon, for example, repentant reprinted Van's letter as part of a whole publication dedicated to salvaging Gay's claims, which I shot him he like.
Wheeler likewise cited his fellow English traveller in the numerous reputations of Gégé that can be found in his journey to Greece.
This relentless and sustained attack left, left, left gidday and his account forever discredited for the remainder of this paper.
I want to turn to Vallens unpublished travel journal and look at it sort of a little more closely.
It's a remarkable document, but one that up until now is entirely escaped scholarly attention.
The general provides evidence of how venom, I think,
went about interpreting the architecture of Athens and how he might have presented that information in published form.
Upon his return as of the latter. There is a sense of belonging, of an encounter with the unknown in the document.
Take, for example, his description of the Colins of the Parthenon,
which he noted with genuine surprise with quotes of Doric order but have no base at all.
The fusty rises immediately out of the pavement as if it grew by fusty Amys.
The shaft. The almost childlike naivete of these words, which is contrasted by Vernons very sophisticated use of architectural terminology,
reveals that this was an architectural observer who was largely, if not completely ignorant of Basner baseless Doric columns.
Such features of ancient Greek temple architecture, but largely unknown in England at the time.
Indeed, there is little reason why Varnum would know this fact.
Given it is not mentioned by any of the ancient sources on Greek architecture that he took with him.
This brings us to another important feature of his travel journal,
the repeated references to the various texts that he read whilst he was viewing the ruins in Athens.
These, of course, include a KIA, but also pinney's, natural history, stray geographical spiciness as a kind of Greece,
although the latter represented the most comprehensive ancient description of Athens. As as I mentioned earlier,
it actually contained very little architectural material and tended to concentrate on the contents of temples rather than their appearance.
Instead, the one ancient text that one and made the greatest use of during his time in Athens was Vitruvius,
which, though not directly related to Greek buildings, became Vernons Guide to the Ruins.
And by the way, I'm always 100 percent sure that the addition, the specific additions that Vernin owned was the 15 56 Daniel Barbro Italian edition.
For reasons a bit boring, I won't go into that.
That's Berlin had come to Athens with a small library designed to facilitate his understanding of the ancient architecture.
He would see once that his reading was carefully planned and far from indiscriminate.
It is apparent that his Junn inform his journal that indicated his reading of classical texts around specific ruins.
For instance, on the morning of 4th, the 4th of November 16th. Seventy five.
He read the fourth book of Vitruvius, which includes the account of the Doric order and then spent the afternoon fearing the sasy on the Agora,
which of course is the Dark Temple on the 6th of November then and recorded that he had
read Vitruvius his fifth book on theatres and then went out to see the theatre Baccus.
He had evidently jettisoned Geezer's account by them in favour of the Roman authors more generic discussion of ancient theatre architecture.
Furthermore, he occasionally considered passages of Vitruvius whilst on site.
Thus, on the 10th of November, he wrote in his journal Politicus High Pithos during a viewing viewing of the Parthenon that he was engaged in.
This is a reference to a section in Vitruvius on Hypothyroid Temple Porticos that in which the Roman also discussed Opta style temples as well,
such as the Parthenon. It's the only moment of truth when when he when the Roman author talks about the style temples.
Various reasons for this seem to stem from his interest in identifying moments
where the architecture of the buildings he was viewing differed from the account.
And Vitruvius, his account of the past known, represents the best evidence of this in his description of the temples and tablature, he noted.
Now there's quote, a passage from Valin that won't really make much sense, but then I'll explain afterwards.
Shivering So this is Vernons take on these tablature.
He says that over the command team of the trade, Griffy should come the suffit of the cornice playing but 18 Jocke Jolie Griffin graven on it.
But here these JOP Jolie are done on planes, habit's some three inches deep,
which she ties under the sole feature of the cornice after the manner of Madelyn's.
What Vernon is basically saying here is that done the mutuals of the of the entirety of these lumps.
Here are arrays that come out from from the soffit.
This is the illustration in the Bobrow Vitruvius, which instead is drawn by the architect Andre Palladio and which they're not present.
These these things are sized up into the soffit as opposed to in the Parthenon.
Although this may seem like a fairly minor point to us as sort of a bit nerdy that I'm interested in.
This was an age in which my new Chesire Vitruvian architectural theory was taken very seriously indeed.
It also provides evidence of Vernons conception of a norm in ancient architectural knowledge.
That was the measure by which any newly discovered ancient building was judged.
Discrepencies from that normal crucial needs to be noted down because they had to pretend they had the
potential to develop the community's knowledge of the subjects beyond the now familiar textual sources.
And as another example of this here, which I'm not going to read out, but one basically compares the capitals of the Pathum to Vitruvius,
his description of the Doric capital and says that this should be here. But in the Parthenon, it's not showrooming.
These observations demonstrate Venz our addition when it came to architectural analysis.
And then in this respect, his writings again fall in line with other roles societies, pub,
plasticised publications and the kind of written by the physician antiquarian Martin Lyster of the Roman mould Angular Tarran York,
that was published in the transactions in sixty eighty three. A similar level of erudition can be observed in this text.
Lister uses his measurements of the ruin to open up an informed discussion of the size of Roman bricks.
In particular, he identified a discrepancy between the Bobrow edition of Vitruvius and the kinds of bricks and plannings natural history.
He was then able to use the YAWP ruins to successfully argued that the Bobrow tax contained an error.
French and English intellectuals in his paid the viewing of ancient buildings could
often be a catalyst for debate about the boundaries of architectural knowledge.
This could combination of pseudo archaeological recordings and textual analysis largely drove.
The development of the community of Knowledge is so and largely drove the development of the community's knowledge of ancient architecture.
And it is clear that one intended the content of his journal to contribute to that process upon his return.
The document is also notable for combining this textured, informed analysis with measurements and sketches of the major buildings burn.
And so most of these take the form of sketch plans. And in this respect, they differ from Spon and Wheeler.
These published images of Greek buildings where nearly all inspective drawings. I'll show you them in a minute.
However, given his subsequent admonition of Kia, the most important question with the to these sketches must be just how accurate?
Well, the answer has to be unafraid. Not very. Or at least not by our standards.
Indeed, the modern observer, some of them seem to be so starkly startlingly inaccurate.
It is hard to believe that they came from the hand of VUN and the original sense of gidday.
This can best be seen in Vernons illustration of this building architectural oddity on the Acropolis.
You're saying I should Vernons plan of the Eurex sound here next to a modern archaeological plan of the temple.
Obviously this is a modern draw when compared to this.
Verna's drawing of the IREX down is wilfully inaccurate,
showing as it does two identical porches to the north and south of the cellar rather than the unequal post porches,
the site being the famous Caryatid porch with such a feature of the building today.
So here is Vernons, two identical porches. The building itself you have is much, much, much smaller.
Putit porch step back from the main entrance portico and that is the famous Caryatid.
Why would an author who so emphatically stressed the accuracy of his recordings do this?
And this is not the only inaccurate plan. She's not alone in it.
The answer must lie, I think, in the way in which accuracy was defined in pre archaeological scholarship,
as we've seen, volume was not alone in proclaiming his precision as a recorder. And Oldenburg just Alan spon all praises exactness.
Given that volume, was Dean so accurate by the standards of the 17th century?
Perhaps we need to evaluate these plans and this plan and others he produced from a more culturally relative position.
So how might this this illustration be accurate by the standards of the day?
Firstly, I believe that Vernon actually ignored these smaller Caryatid Porche in his plan because he almost certainly never saw it in the first place.
And as a company notes and measurements of the temple, he made no reference to the structure.
No, the despond, nor Wheeler in their accounts of the building, which is surprising given its fame today.
Perhaps the Caryatid port and the south wall of the temple were inaccessible at the time due to the actions of the Ottoman garrison.
And given that it's a fairly small structure, was probably obscured by nice building work in the vicinity of the temple.
Unfortunately, that building has been cleared away in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Possibly, if I was an archaeologist, I may be able to reconstruct what the Ottoman buildings were on the site.
But I know maybe someone might one day. But from from from Vernons accounts and from other accounts in the period, it seems that this was not visible.
The only one of eight Vernons ancient authors to discuss this temple was passiveness, whose account of the building was completely garbled.
And he may make he makes no reference to the has a port. So what I think Vernon saw was that which is I think I'm fairly sure about the.
But this does not explain the inclusion of a symmetrical porch in place of the absent KARIUS porch on Boehner's plan.
This portion until the when it must be, I think, hypothetical. And B, based on his prior knowledge of Roman architectural principles, Roman mockery.
Indeed, Vitruvius makes reference to temples in Rome that had to symmetrical porches either side of an entrance portico,
the now lost temple of Karlstrom Pollak's in the circus four minutes in Rome was for Vitruvius.
The best example of this type, Vitruvius also claimed that the temple with such an arrangement existed on the
Athenian Acropolis that the Romanoff's wording here is vague and anecdotal,
to say the least, regardless in its symmetry. Vernons plan of the Iraq On follows the general principles of Vitruvian architectural theory.
It was an accurate reconstruction based on the norm that guided much of thens analysis of Greek architecture.
These essentially matches Vitruvius description of these types of temples with two
identical porches that the temple may have at one point lost its other symmetrical.
Porche would have made sense for them because it hasn't always had a porch there.
But he didn't, Nayla. But it would've made sense to him because he was aware that the temple had suffered since antiquity,
and he recorded in his journal that it had been quite ruined by fire in the intervening years.
And this was back. Vernons plan was typical for late 17th century antiquarian images of ancient architecture.
In this period, a certain amount of doctoring to remove more modern interventions and tidy up ruined structures
was expected in architectural representations and in no way jeopardise their perceived accuracy.
Here, respondent, Wheeler's illustrations and the Parthenon, for example, which completely tidy up everything.
They get rid of the minarets and they get rid of those windows that have been punched in the side of it.
They restore the roof, they remove the and the culmination. There's no question of the accuracy of these images being questioned.
Vernon did likewise with his plan of the pioneer in which he left out the mediaeval fortifications that had subsumed the original temple.
If this plan was accurate by the standards of our day, the Frankish town would set abutting the entrance steps, have fun and doesn't show.
Here's another example from that Martin Lyster kinds of York.
I was showing his Lissa's illustration of the Roman walls of York, which appear to have been airbrushed.
And this, I think, is sort of fairly common in antiquarian imagery of the time.
At no point was the accuracy of any of these image question in English sources.
Such tidying up even apply to Vernons drawing of the idea of Haggerty's attack.
That one building that creates a fence laid up in his sketch of the exterior elevation, which is, as you can see, very rough.
I'm afraid he seems to have taken the surviving fragment with its two storey Alcaide and extended the length of the facade.
Here is a I should say that there's no point in really comparing this to the
existing building because it's been so heavily restored in the 20th century.
But if you compare it to an 18th century later, 18th century drawing of the things, you can kind of see what those doing here is taking.
He's noticed a couple of arches on top of the other. So he's sort of beginning to out them.
I think he sort of restoring me where he thinks the original elevation is doing.
In conclusion, this drawing on the other plans are not Miten,
are not what we might want from Vernon, given his contempt for gays illustration of the Odean.
I think that we can at least make sense of it based on the antiquarian conventions of the day.
These were accurate within the band boundaries of existing textual knowledge and were designed to show ancient architecture in its entirety,
unspoilt by subsequent interventions of damage as well.
A never made it back. He never got to repair any of these plans for publication.
And in general, although his letter was the first thing, the kinds of the city. It was very brief compared to what he had been planning to publish.
Had he survived. Indeed, his journal provides ample evidence that Vernon was had more than enough material for a single publication in Athens.
And although it would have been less ambitious than later 18th century volumes on the subject,
it would have certainly been more detailed in the accounts published by Spon and Wheeler in the years after Vernon's death.
Neither of these authors included any plans of the buildings in Athens and the illustrations in Wheelus.
Text in particular are rudimentary. I just think of St.
But Venice General remained unpublished and we are left to wonder how differently the course of
British architecture might have been if this diligent recorder of ancient Greek buildings had
returned and produced a relatively accurate and detailed account of the Athenian ruins over a
century before the Greek revival became the dominant mode in architectural design in this country.
Instead, it was Vernons exposure of gear that would become his legacy.
His signing of the alarm over the fabrication fabrications of the French text ensued and showed that
subsequent literature on the subject of ancient architecture would be much more rigorously scrutinised.
Initially, this manifested itself in spon and as critical morning of the questions of authenticity,
would continue to dog the recording of ancient architecture throughout the 18th century.
This can best be seen in the work. The most famous British scholars to follow in Vernon's footsteps.
James Stewart and Nicholas Roberts, whose antiquities of Athens published between 60 and 70 to 1794,
would become the detailed English text on Athens that Vernon had originally envisaged.
Stuart and the third volume again lauded Vernon as the most honest and diligent, diligent Inquirer.
During his short residence in the city and once again republished Vernon's letter,
should Revit generally tend to sort of be very rude about Spohn and Wheeler?
But they praise them and think he think they could. They considered one of the most accurate of their predecessors.
But then his legacy manifested itself elsewhere in Stuart and Robert's text.
The famous illustrations in the antiquity of Athens occasionally contained portraits of either the author's showing,
one of them drawing the ruins, as other scholars have noted. These these cameos often serve as an important purpose in the text.
They demonstrate that. And Robert, like Van Spon Wheeler. Though unlike Gégé and his fictional brother had actually seen the ruins in person.
Predictably enough, one such illustration was the force of the idea of hayrides Atticus Stelle, masquerading as the saviour of Bacchus.
In this image, which was originally painted by Stewart and Gurche,
Reva's is shown clad in contemporary Greek dress, sketching a theatre from the shade of nearby ruins.
It is hard to see this inclusion of Rabbit in his illustration as anything other than a reference
to that small but intellectually significant moment that had taken place 100 years earlier,
namely the denouncements of Geezer's fabrication, fabricated image of the theatre, the Vernons first hand account.
Here, there was a little memorial hidden in the principal textbook of the Greek revival to the early Royal
Society and to Letha of France's of the first English recorder of the architecture of Athens.