Page 43 - Beholding Liberty!

PERISTYLE
I.1.2
[Marie-Gabriel-Auguste-Florent comte de Choiseul-Gouffier]
Voyage pittoresque de la Grece, tome premier.
A Paris, M. DCC.LXXII.
A Paris, Rue Férou, No 24, Chez J.-J. BLAISE, De l’Imprimerie de Leblanc, Rue Furstemberg, No 24 Library of the Hellenic Parliament
FRENCH COMTE de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752- 1817), a scholar and antiquities collector, studied under the Greek scholar Abbé Jean-Jacques Bar- thélemy [cat. no I.1.3]. An archaeologist himself, he undertook his first Greek voyage in 1776 and pub- lished his impressions, which included continental Greece and the Archipelago, in 1782.
His richly illustrated “pittoresque journey”, in a style that is eloquent but also well-documented on the basis of ancient literature, offers the European au- dience a complete picture, literally and figuratively, of his contemporary Greek world and its monu- mental heritage. Both the text and illustrations fo- cus primarily on the Greek classical antiquity, but the Greeks living under Ottoman rule are also pre- sented, and then-current historical developments and fermentations are commented on, including the Orloff Revolution. Accordingly, enslaved Mod- ern Greeks are interspersed amongst the beautiful ancient monuments and ruins. In this respect, Cho- iseul-Gouffier made a decisive contribution to the formation of Philhellenism, always filtered through Antiquity, but also of the first-hand discovery of his contemporary Greek world. Indeed, his fervent philhellenic views created issues for him in assum- ing his ambassadorial duties at the Sublime Porte (1784), so that he attempted to partially refute them. Later, after personal experiences due to his royalist convictions, his philhellenic fervour would be tempered.
The allegorical figure adorning the title page, designed by Jean Michel Moreau le Jeune (1741- 1814) and engraved by Charles Nicolas Varin (1741-1812), is an emblematic representation of Philhellenic art. It depicts enslaved Hellas in chains, with a Greek Doric temple in the background, and surrounded by memorials to the great men of
Greek antiquity associated with the defence of lib- erty (Lycurgus, Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Epaminondas, Pelopidas, Timoleon, Demosthenes, Phocion, Philopoemen). On a column beside Hel- las is inscribed Simonides’ epitaph to Leonidas and the fallen of the Battle of Thermopylae; on the rock in the background an inscription in Latin (EXORIARE ALIQUIS, Virgil, Aeneid, IV.625) calls for rebellion. This personification of enslaved Greece as Hellas established an exemplar for a number of allegorical representations.
The success of this work led the Comte de Cho- iseul-Gouffier to continue his travels (1784-92) after becoming ambassador in Constantinople. On the basis of these tours, he published a second volume in 1809, mainly concerning Constantinople and Asia Minor; the planned third volume (essen- tially the second part of the second volume) was printed posthumously (in 1822, by Jean-Denis Bar- bié du Bocage).
The wealth of engraved maps, views and archi- tectural drawings, exquisitely crafted by a group of first-rate artists such as Jean Baptiste Hilaire (1751-1828) and Louis François Cassas (1756- 1827) and skilled engineers, as well as by Barbié du Bocage’s team [cat. no III. 8.A.2] made for a monumental edition.
THE AWAKENING OF HELLENISM From Archaeoloatry to Philhellenism 43