The gaze of Edward Dodwell
The English archaeologist Edward Dodwell (Dublin 1767-Rome 1832) was one of the first travellers of a new “Thought” born out of the interest and admiration for Greek Civilisation and Culture, called the pro-Hellenic current that arose in the early 19th century and counted Lord Byron among its most active supporters. In 1801 Dodwell undertook his first of three trips to Greece, then still under Ottoman rule. In 1805 and 1806 he returned to Greece but in the company of the Italian watercolour painter Simone Pomardi who was well known at the time for his watercolours of views of Rome. Edward Dodwell was also a talented, self-taught watercolourist, and together with Pomardi they produced around a thousand drawings and watercolours depicting evocative scenes of the Acropolis of Athens, the ruins of Mycenae and Ithaca. In 1819 Dodwell published the results of his travels in London in a book A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece.
This project is a personal and free artistic interpretation (with all possible errors) of classicism reproduced by the two vedutists Dodwell and Pomardi. The photos show the archaeological site of Paestum, imagining it to have been painted by Edward Dodwell.
A warm greeting and many thanks in any case.
Enzo Crispino
www.enzocrispino.com
