RUINS - the confounding of order and design

It is central to the Romantic spirit that it is moved by the crumbling remains of once great civilisations.
 
TOP coloured engraving, source unknown The Ruins of Persepholis 13 x18 cms
 
 
BELOW LEFT engraving by F.Berardi insc. "Cio' ch'erse il fasto, or cupre arena ed erba" ruins in the Roman Campagna 19 x 26 cms c1720
 
BELOW RIGHT anonymous engraving for The Complete English Traveller "Prospect of the Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey in Somersetshire." 18.5 x 30cms c1720

 
 

 

a plate from Johann Huttich's book on the antiquities around Mainz 1728, and about as ruined as could be.

Bartoli, Admiranda Romanarum Antiquitatum, Rome 1693, a survey of Roman bas reliefs

Rosinus, Antiquitatum Romanarum, 1609

Robert Adam, Ruins of the Place of Diocletian, 1764

Robert Fairburn, Circus of Alexander Severius , c1799

Ruins of Morea from Moore's Voyages and Travels, handcoloured print

Ruins of Zeebrugge, c1918

Piranesi's Fragments

Nardini, Roma Antica... 1688

The Japanese earthquake of 1891

Ruins of Albert on the Somme, c1918

A Norfolk Album, Ruins

TITLE PAGE TO Collection of...RUINS in ROME, James Merigot, London c1819

Fischer von Erlach, History of Architecture, 1725, the Great Cistern