This hard-to-find study by a Victorian-era architect presents precise and detailed renderings of antiquities from Greece and southern Italy. Scottish artist, architect, and jeweler James Cromar Watt (1862?1940) belonged to the Royal Institute of British Architects. This volume is the product of on-site studies he conducted in 1893 in Athens, Palermo, and Naples. His painstaking drawings, most of them full size, recapture the delicacy and precision characteristic of ancient designs from Greece and southern Italy.
The splendid variety of designs includes depictions of geometric patterns on marble floors, ornamented urns, and decorative embellishments in the form of leaves, birds, flowers, faces, and realistic as well as mythological animals. Scenes from Pompeii range from a long view of the Forum and close-ups of its richly embellished pillars to details of the altar from the Temple of Aesculapius and floor patterns from the Temple of Isis. Graphic artists and lovers of antiquities will rejoice in this inexpensive new edition of a rare resource and its wealth of illustrations.