Mid 18th Century "Ruins of Palymara, Otherwise Tedmor, in the Desert" Robert Wood Print, Framed

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Original 1753 Print by Giovanni Battista Bora for Robert Wood, London, The Ruins of Palmyra, Plate XXVI, Known as The … Read more Original 1753 Print by Giovanni Battista Bora for Robert Wood, London, The Ruins of Palmyra, Plate XXVI, Known as The Monumental Arch, The Arch of Triumph, The Arch of Septimius Severus. Frame measures 18-1/2" x 23-1/2" Print measures 13" x 17-7/8". This is an original copperplate engraving from 1753 and not a reprint. These are very rare and highly sought after, especially in this nice of a condition. (50008)

This engraving is in very nice condition, The frames have a bit of wear, not bad.

The Arch was built sometime during the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211 CE) and was destroyed by The Islamic State in 2015.

Palmyra should have particular resonance with Americans because the ancient site has had a direct influence on US architecture, including buildings such as the Capitol, White House and Monticello, the Virginia home of President Thomas Jefferson.

Between 1749 and 1751, the antiquarians Robert Wood, John Bouverie and James Dawkins began an expedition to view the ancient sites of the Eastern Mediterranean which had hitherto been viewed as inaccessible to eighteenth-century tourists. Bouverie passed away in 1750, but Wood and Dawkins continued on to Syria and the Levant to view the ancient cities of Baalbek and Palmyra. Due to the arid climate of the Syrian interior, the ruins were remarkably well preserved and provided exquisite examples of classical architecture. Unlike earlier antiquarian works which portrayed only the most picturesque views of ancient sites, Wood also measured and recorded proportions of columns and remnants of friezes and ceilings. This approach to antiquarianism was one of the first of its kind and influenced both antiquarians and architects in Britain and France throughout the later eighteenth century. Wood was also a friend of the architect Robert Adam and the engravings made from Baalbek and Palmyra came to influence Adam's unique style, most notably at Osterley Manor and Syon House.

This Print was removed from a First edition of “one of the most significant archaeological works of the mid-18th century” , boasting 59 monumental copper-engraved architectural views, elevations and details (one folding) after detailed on-site drawings in the Syrian desert, in splendid contemporary binding. And is one of the rarest and most sought after books, by serious Book Collectors.

Wood's Ruins of Palmyra was "a triumph such as no English architectural book had ever before achieved. Here was the first of a new breed of archeological works presenting the results of on-the-spot investigations of ancient monuments, with ostensibly accurate measured drawings of the ruins, precise descriptions of the state and the site in which they were discovered and exact copies of what inscriptions there were.

This material was intended to serve lovers of antiquity, scholars, artists and architects, regardless of nationality or interest. Its publication was greeted with widespread acclaim throughout Europe" . The engraving of the plates, done by several hands from on-site drawings by draftsman Giovanni Battista Bora, took over a year. Both this work and its 1757 companion, Ruins of Balbec, established Great Britain as the leader in archaeological studies (displacing France) and equipped a new generation of architects with the primary source materials for the Neoclassical revival. "But it was not as a source for the imitation of details that the book was valued, rather as a dispassionate and accurate survey of the architecture of antiquity". With 59 finely engraved plates (numbered 1-57) and three in-text plates of inscriptions. Plate I, extending over three leaves, bound in this copy as a single, long, folding plate.

Robert Wood (1717 – 9 September 1771) was an Irish-British traveler, classical scholar, civil servant and politician.

He was the son of the Rev. James Wood of Summerhill, County Meath and educated at Glasgow University (1732) and the Middle Temple (1736).

In 1750-1751 Wood traveled around the Levant with two wealthy young Oxford scholars James Dawkins and John Bouverie (who died of a fever early in their expedition) and an Italian draftsman Giovanni Battista Borra. Their primary goal was to explore the Troad and locate the key sites mentioned by Homer. Moving south into Syria, they then took careful measurements and drawings of the ancient Roman ruins of Palmyra and Baalbek. The results of these were published in 1753 and 1757 in both English and French editions and were among the first systematic publications of ancient buildings. Both works were of great influence on neoclassical architecture in Britain, Continental Europe and America. From 1753 to 1756, Wood was the tutor and traveling companion (or Bear-leader as such men were known at the time) of the young Duke of Bridgewater, the richest peer in England, in making the Grand Tour.

In 1756 he was appointed Under Secretary to the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, who was initially Pitt the Elder. It was to Wood that Granville famously quoted an appropriate passage from Homer's Iliad as he signed the Treaty of Paris on his deathbed in 1763 (Wood published an essay on Homer in 1765, which stated that true knowledge can come only after one has had an opportunity to evaluate one's own society in relation to others). In 1764, following the instructions of Secretary of State Halifax, Wood acted under a general warrant to seize the papers of John Wilkes, who subsequently won damages of £1000 from him for trespass.

In 1761 Wood was elected Member of Parliament for the Duke of Bridgewater's pocket borough of Brackley in Northamptonshire, which he continued to represent until his death. He was also Master of the Revels in Ireland, and at one point it was rumored that he would be appointed Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, but the Lord Lieutenant objected to Wood's "public and private character" as well as his "mean birth", and the appointment was never made.

After his death on 9 September 1771, Wood was buried near his home in Putney at Putney Old Burial Ground, in a white marble sarcophagus engraved with an epitaph written by Horace Walpole. He had married Ann, the daughter of Thomas Skottowe, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. One son Robert was also an Member of Parliament.

Giovanni Battista Bora was born in Dogliani. Studying under Bernardo Antonio Vittone from 1733 to 1736 (producing 10 plates for his teacher's Istruzione elementari per indirizzo de'giovani allo studio dell'architettura civile, published in Lugano in 1760), in 1748 he published a work of his own. This was a handbook on buildings' stability, practical in tone. He met Robert Wood in Rome, and joined his 1750-51 antiquarian expedition to Asia Minor and Syria as its architectural draftsman before returning with Wood to England. There he used his sketchbooks (now in the library of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, London) to produce the original drawings (now in the Royal Institute of British Architects) for Wood's The Ruins of Balbec and The Ruins of Palmyra, and from 1752 to 1760 carried out commissions for English patrons. These works and their images led to motifs from Baalbek and Palmyra becoming fashionable for ceiling and interior decorations in England and Italy (Borra used them, for example, in his own work on the south facade of the Palazzo Isnardi and the interior decoration of its Sala d'Ercole and Sala di Diana, on the piano nobile). He is thought to have died in Turin. See less