Introduction

Cambridge University Press eBooks, pp. 1–10

Abstract

Few ancient monuments have fulfilled so significant a role in Western culture, or stimulated such intense scholarly and artistic activity, as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. From the churches of Renaissance Rome to the towers of Manhattan, Chicago and St Louis (Fig. I.1), from the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris to the learned societies of Victorian London, and further afield to the Andean paintings of colonial Cuzco and the refined prints of Edo Japan, there are few historical contexts where it has not been discussed, represented or imitated. 1 Yet this remarkable posterity has rarely been acknowledged, and never yet been examined in detail. The present volume aims to fill this gap within our consciousness of Western civilisation’s connections to a distant past, while providing readers with an overview of the most important cases of engagement with the Mausoleum, from the moment of resurgent interest in Antiquity during the Italian Renaissance to the time of archaeological rediscovery in the 1850s. Variously focusing on architectural sources, pictorial works of art and textual – even literary – discussions, its interdisciplinary approach purports to reflect the extraordinary richness of the monument’s afterlife.

Authors 2

1. Desmond Bryan Kraege

   University of Lausanne

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Lausanne, Switzerland

2. Felix Martin Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Aachen, Germany