The Soane Museum Study Group is an open forum for scholars – both established and emerging – to present new research into an aspect of architectural history and/or Soane’s collection.

Matthew Walker – The Greek Revival: A Prehistory

This paper draws on Matthew’s current research into the earliest Western European encounters with the architecture of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, and will show how the intellectual and antiquarian foundations of the Greek Revival were laid far earlier than has previously been thought. Matthew will argue that many of the ideas and concepts that we associate with Leroy and Stuart and Revett actually originate in writing on Greek architecture from the seventeenth century, and that those famous authors of the mid-eighteenth were as much the end of a process as a beginning.

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About the speaker

Dr. Matthew Walker is a Lecturer in Architectural History at Queen Mary University of London, having previously been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico. His research focusses on the relationship between architecture and intellectual culture in early modern Britain and France and his first book, Architects and Intellectual Culture in Post-Restoration England was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. He is currently working on two new projects. The first is a book about British and French engagement with ancient Greek and Eastern Mediterranean architecture in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The second is an edition of the complete correspondence of Sir Christopher Wren, which he am preparing in collaboration with Professor Anthony Geraghty.

Visitor information

There will be refreshments provided. On arrival, please come to no. 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The door will be staffed from 6.00pm.