Stourhead: All roads lead to Rome – and back again.

John Harrison

Classics Dept. Open University

Presentation content

• Stourhead

• Carlo Gastone

• Stourhead garden elements

• Overseas visitors

• Hagaparken & Wörlitz

• Summary and conclusions

Stourhead

An Italian visitor

The Temple of Ceres/Flora

‘I reached the Temple of Flora, where I read on the

door ‘Procul o procul este profane’….; the order is heavy

Doric, which really doesn't suit Flora’.

The Grotto

‘While I left the grotto on tip-toes [quietly] so as not to interrupt

the slumber of the Nymph, I arrived in another grotto in which

the water gurgled more noisily, falling from the urn of a

bearded river god, and I read these other verses - Haec

domus…..’

The Temple of Apollo

‘It is round, and has twelve columns that take in half as many

niches in which I wanted to see the twelve signs of the zodiac,

instead of the Callipygia, the Apollino, Mercury and other

similar deities’.

‘Without food and wine, love cannot flourish’. - Act IV, scene 1, line 5 of Eunuchus by Terence.

The Pantheon

‘In front there is Bacchus, and Anadyomene, on the side of the

temple, the Faun of Florence, the other niche is empty’.

Overseas visitors to Stourhead c.1765 - Leopold III Frederick Franz, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau

1769 – Johannes Wiedewelt

1779 – Fredrik Magnus Piper

1791 – Baron Van Spaen Van Biljoen

1810 – Louis Simond

Hagaparken, Stockholm

Wörlitz, Dessau, Germany

Summary & Conclusions

• Literary tropes:

– Digression

– Hyperbole

• Elite & Polite visitors

– Classical education

– Grand Tourists

• Cross-validation