Research Seminar: Francis Vernon, the Early Royal Society and the First English Encounter with Greek Architecture
This lecture was delivered at the University Of Oxford History Of Art Department's Research Seminar series by Dr Matthew Walker, History of Art Department, University of Oxford. The paper explores the architectural and antiquarian writings of Francis Vernon, a member of the Royal Society of London and a traveller in Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the 1670s. Vernon wrote the first account of the Athenian Acropolis in the English language and was amongst the very first English people to see the ruins of ancient Greece firsthand. The paper also brings to light the survival of Vernon's travel journal, a remarkable document that contains some of the very first Western descriptions and illustrations of temples such as the Parthenon and the Erechtheion.