Daniel Orrells (Kings College London), "Printing Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century"

This talk explores how antiquarians during the mid eighteenth century illustrated their narratives about the history of ancient art. In the later 1600s and early 1700s, science had become spectacular and antiquarianism followed suit. This talk examines how key eighteenth-century antiquarians such as Winckelmann, Mariette, Caylus and d'Hancarville all became interested in how engravings of ancient art and archaeology might be able to visualise a historical narrative. The talk, then, offers a fresh, new analysis of the reception of classical antiquity in the eighteenth century.

Daniel Orrells is Reader in Ancient Literature and Its Reception at King's College London, where he is also the Chair of the Department of Classics. His work focuses on the reception of classical antiquity in modern intellectual history, in particular in French, German, Italian and British contexts. He is the author of two monographs, Classical Culture and Modern Masculinity and Sex: Antiquity and its Legacy, both published by Oxford University Press.