The Afterlife of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

Re-conceiving an Ancient Wonder in Early Modern Europe

Felix Martin editor Desmond Bryan Kraege editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:20th Aug '26

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Afterlife of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus cover

This book covers the artworks and texts inspired by the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, from architectural projects to prints and paintings.

Few buildings have been as important to Western culture as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. This book covers the many artworks and texts inspired by the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, from architectural projects to treatises, prints, and paintings. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.Few buildings have been as important to Western culture as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. One of the Seven Wonders of antiquity, it was destroyed during the Middle Ages, leading countless architects, antiquarians, painters and printmakers in Early Modern Europe to speculate upon its appearance. This book – the first on its subject – examines their works, from erudite publications to simple pen sketches, from elegant watercolours to complete buildings inspired by the monument. Spanning the period between the Italian Renaissance and the discovery and archaeological excavation of the Mausoleum's foundations in the 1850s, it covers the most important cultural contexts of Western Europe, without neglecting artworks from Peru, China and Japan. The monument's connexion with themes of widowhood and female political power are analysed, as are the manifold interactions between architecture, text and image in the afterlife of the Mausoleum. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

'From the Renaissance through the Victorian era, architects mused on the surviving ekphrastic descriptions of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, producing imaginative reconstructions and original designs. The essays comprising this volume explore key moments in the rich afterlife of a major monument, illuminating its place in the history of western architecture.' John Pinto, Princeton University
'This collection of essays constitutes the first extensive exploration of the early modern afterlives of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, a building that enjoyed great literary fame and was considered in Antiquity to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Covering a period in which the actual remains of the mausoleum were unknown, the book charts the building's extraordinarily varied reception, as manifested in images, texts and architectural projects. In doing so, it traces the rich imaginary that formed around a hallowed but physically absent structure, delivering, in the process, important insights about culture, memory and the workings of the architectural imagination.' Caspar Pearson, Director of Studies, Warburg Institute, University of London

ISBN: 9781009728614

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 500g

246 pages