The Roman Remains: John Izard Middleton's Visual Souvenirs of 1820–1823, with Additional Views in Italy, France and Switzerland

Engaging sketches of the classical landscape drawn by a noted nineteenth-century American artist and archaeologist

The Roman Remains presents forty-nine previously unpublished and recently discovered nineteenth-century drawings by John Izard Middleton, an American expatriate and South Carolina native who dedicated his life to the study of antiquity and classical ruins. Praised as "America's first classical archaeologist" by Charles Eliot Norton, himself one of the country's foremost cultural historians, Middleton was a member of Europe's intellectual elite and an intimate of such luminaries as the Madame Germaine de StaÃl, Juliette RÃcamier, Benjamin Constant, and August von Schlegel. Until now Middleton has been known primarily for his widely admired drawings of Grecian architectural remains, published in 1812.

In these pencil, pen, and wash views of Rome and its environs, Middleton casts aside romantic interpretations of an earlier age and employs an insightful eye and an accuracy of vision that would foreshadow the coming age of scientific inquiry and archaeological investigation. The drawings not only record the beauty of the Italian countryside but also afford accurate archaeological readings of many sites that have been greatly altered since the early nineteenth century. Contemporary comparative photographs of the sites accompany many of the drawings, and essays that explore the life and times of the artist, early-nineteenth-century Rome, the state of classical archaeology at the time, and Middleton's place in the history of classical scholarship set these charming works in their cultural context.