James “Athenian” Stuart and the Geometry of Setting Out

A characteristic feature of the neoclassical attitude to Greco-Roman architecture that ran from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth has long been held to be the minute surveys of ancient buildings that were undertaken and published during that period. Ultimately inspired by Antoine Desgodetz’s Les edifices antiques de Rome (1682), measured surveys of antique buildings across the Mediterranean world became a staple part of architectural and antiquarian study from the 1750s, especially in relation to the growing interest in Greek architecture. The British were especially assiduous in framing these surveying activities as part of a discourse about “truth” (as Robert Wood put it in 1753) and “accuracy”, a term used by James Stuart in the preface to the first volume of The Antiquities of Athens in 1762. However, the process of surveying an existing structure is by no means commensurate with that of setting it out in the first place, since some dimensions are effectively concealed by the fabric of the building itself. Further still, methods appropriate for drawing on the smooth surface of a drawing board may be quite different from those appropriate for the staking out of the plan in the field or the marking of stone by the mason. This situation raises a number of related conundra: How did Stuart take measurements in the field? How did they get translated to published form? What assumptions did he make about Greek setting out, and how did these assumptions color his measurements and his reconstructions?