PolarBear
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Lord Cameron, a trustee of the British Museum, shows his niece Lady Catherine Middleton and her fiance, the Duke of Cambridge, the museum's latest acquisition, an Ionic Greek Column brought back from a recent Royal Society Expedition excavating a Greek temple from the 6th Century B.C. Such artifacts of the Classical Age of Greece and Rome were extremely popular in Europe in the late 18th and early decades of the 19th Century. This was an age that saw the development of archaeology with the publication of German Art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums ("History of Ancient Art") (1764) and later in 1816 the purchase of the so-called Elgin Marble's by the British Museum. The Earl of Elgin (1764-1841) was a soldier(Scots Guards) and diplomat, serving as ambassador(1799-1803) to the Ottoman Empire. Elgin bribed Ottoman officials in Athens (Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time) to let him remove Greek sculpture's from the Parthenon and other buildings on the Athenian Acropolis which he brought back to his home in Scotland before eventually selling them to the museum. Elgin's wife, Mary (Countess of Elgin) "not only financed the endeavor but also convinced grizzled Navy commanders (in the midst of war, no less) to carry the statues back to England". This fascination with the art of Greco-Roman antiquity was known as Neo(New) Classicism. It even influenced Napoleon in France' who saw himself as an heir to the Emperors of Rome.
Supplementary Illustrations:
1. J. J. Winckelmann
2. Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin 1788
3. Countess of Elgin, Mary Nisbet
4. Napoleon by Jacques Louis David
Note: the 3 figures are from W. Britain's Jane Austen series. Austen lived during the height of the Neoclassical era. She and the women of her time dressed in a fashion influenced by Greco-Roman styles.
Supplementary Illustrations:
1. J. J. Winckelmann
2. Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin 1788
3. Countess of Elgin, Mary Nisbet
4. Napoleon by Jacques Louis David
Note: the 3 figures are from W. Britain's Jane Austen series. Austen lived during the height of the Neoclassical era. She and the women of her time dressed in a fashion influenced by Greco-Roman styles.
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