'Rome & its Environs, from a Trigonometrical Survey’

Abstract

At the nexus between topography and illustration, "Rome and its Environs" allows us to consider the shifting boundaries between the arts and sciences, imagination and description. That it illustrates a classical landscape, mapped out by Gibbon's History of the Decline of Empires, transports viewers back to a classical Rome now in decline, and now the past Empire that Britain hopes to become.