30 What is Architectural History?
der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst in 1755.^28 The connoisseur,
collector and antiquarian Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1777)
also promoted Greece as a modern model of a superior anti-
quity. The Frenchman identifi ed Rome with the old order of
myth, legend and unbounded theocratic authority. Rome
spoke to a persistent humanism as Greece spoke to the values
of the Enlightenment.^29
When Piranesi and Mariette went head to head in the
1760s, the issue was hardly limited to whether the architec-
ture of ancient Rome was an ‘improvement’ on that of
Greece, or a ‘native’, Etruscan invention.^30 Piranesi defended
the originality of Rome’s contribution to the classical tradi-
tion, but in his eyes the fi ndings of the German, French and
British archaeologists enjoyed the same footing as the more
rhetorical image of Roman antiquity drawn by Nolli (along-
side whom Piranesi had worked) and were on a par with the
ancient history of Livy (Titus Livius).^31 Piranesi was creden-
tialed as an archaeologist and adept at the dispassionate
documentation of ruins, but his views of Rome and the mar-
ginalia of his scientifi c studies belie a perspective that is reso-
lutely antiquarian and humanist. Measurement and myth
together give rise to a more powerful historical whole than
either could attain on its own.
The facts of the past
The tools brought to bear upon the study of ancient buildings
and ruins in the eighteenth century came to have an enduring
place among the techniques of architectural historiography.
Through observation, measurement and documentation, the
extent of an artefact can be surveyed, known independent of
its authorship, signifi cance and context. Combining this
information with knowledge of building technologies and
their history, the stages of a building’s construction can be
charted and dated with a degree of certainty that has only
increased in the last two centuries. The empiricist drive for
knowledge for its own sake was not without ideology, as
the French historian Michel Foucault reminds us,^32 and the
questions of usefulness, application and power are not far