# Transcript

TONY LENTIN

The basis of eighteenth century education was in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome.

If a young man were rich he would go on the grand tour of Italy even if he didn’t travel he would be familiar with the images of antiquity.

One wealthy British collector Charles Tarnley accumulated over nearly forty years a huge collection of antique marbles. They were unearthed in Italy, shipped to Britain and are now in the British Museum they show us what the men and women of the enlightenment admired as the peak of artistic perfection.

The most influential art critic of the enlightenment was Johanne Joachim Winklemann, he described the characteristics of classical sculpture as a combination of calm grandeur and noble simplicity in gesture and expression.

The only way for us to become great even inimitable Vinklemann declared is through imitation of the ancients.

PRESENTER

Eighteenth century taste in architecture was also dominated by the classical. Keddlestone Hall in Derbyshire was designed by the architect Robert Adam for Lord Curson, this magnificent stately home was based on wellknown Roman models.

The arched centre piece of the south façade is modelled on the Arch of Constantine. It’s columns are topped by statues and an arch shape surrounds the main door. The climax at the heart of Keddlestone is the marble hall, this is clearly Roman in inspiration and richly decorated with classical sculptures.

Enlightenment thinkers surrounded themselves with images of their Roman heroes. A cultivated Emperor Hadrian and the admired stoical ruler Marcus Orealius take pride of place in the Townley collection.

But what was so admirable about ancient Greece and Rome? To the enlightened thinker classical antiquity provided a powerful alternative to the biblical and the ecclesiastical authority of contemporary Europe.

The Philosophs dream of antiquity evoked a society based on enlightened values on reason rather than religion and on artistic and architectural perfection.