Page 64 - Beholding Liberty!

64 BEHOLDING LIBERTY!
I.1.15
Louis-François Cassas (1756-1827)
View of Athens seen from the Hadrianic Aqueduct on the Lycabettus hill, late 18th cent.
handcoloured engraving, 52 x 75 cm
inscribed (caption): VUE D’ATHÈNES (low, on the frame) Hellenic Parliament Art Collection, inv. n. 870
A VIEW OF ATHENS by Louis-Francois Cassas, but one radically different from his mag- nificent panorama of the city [cat no Ι.1.14].
From his brief stay in Athens, together with his patron, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier [cat. no I.1.2] in 1784, Cassas produced a series of drawings and watercolours of various Athenian monuments, some of which were also published in the album Grandes Vues Pittoresques, in 1813.
Of course, the short period of his survey, only two days, would not have allowed him to work com- fortably and systematically. It must be assumed that he worked on preliminary sketches he made on location. He exhibited such works at the Paris Salons in 1804 and 1814.
This engraving, a view of Athens from the Ly- cabettus Hill, where the remains of Hadrian’s aq- ueduct are located, reveals the work method of the artists of travel book illustration, based on other visual documents.
The left part of the propylon that once stood on Ly- cabettus had been incorporated into a city wall in 1778, namely the Gate of Boubounistra, which the city governor, Hadji Ali Haseki, had hastily commis-
sioned to strengthen the defence against Turkish Albanian attacks. Cassas shows the monument as we know it from earlier impressions of it. In fact, in a watercolour by Cassas, now in the Athens City Mu- seum (ink and watercolour on paper, 46.5×64.5cm, inv. no 31), which depicts the propylon of the aque- duct with Lycabettus in the background, the right part of the architrave is also shown on the ground, although it had been completely lost, but it appears in the engraving illustrating Julien-David Le Roy’s Les ruines de plus beaux monuments de la Grèce (Paris 1758). Here Cassas has chosen the view from the aqueduct – a site frequently visited by travellers – with a view of the city and the Acropo- lis in the background. Again, it appears that he did not base his image on first-hand observation, but on the engraving that opens the first volume of The Antiquities of Athens by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett (London 1762). In fact, Cassas has enriched it with scattered spolia on the right to emphasise the antiquarian effect.
In any case, the life of the inhabitants of Athens is portrayed with reference to the exquisite antiq- uities which were the main purpose of visit for the antiquarian travellers of the period.