Thermopylæ. "Pass of Thermopylæ

Greece: London Rodwell & Martin. 1821. Aquatint view of Thermopylæ from the Deluxe edition of Dodwell's "Views in Greece". Original hand colour, mounted on card with title caption to verso The view shows the pass of Thermopylæ with the plain down to the sea, on the left is Mount Knemis and also Mount Œta, Thermopylae means "hot gates" in Greek and the name is related with its hot sulphur springs. This is also the place of cavernous entrances to Hades in mythology. Thermopylae is primarily known for the battle that took place there between the Greek forces including the Spartans and the Persian forces. It is the only land route large enough to bear any significant traffic between Lokris and Thessaly and thus was the site of several battles.. Dodwell states that the two figures are"attendants of the author, for as the defiles of Thermopylæ are sometimes infested with banditti ,it was necssary to be well prepared." Bright and clean. Edward Dodwell (1767 1832) was an Irish painter, traveller, antiquary and a writer on archaeology. Educated at Trinity College Cambridge. Dodwell travelled to Greece in 1801 in company with Sir William Gell touring the Ionian Islands and the Troad, In 1805-6 when he was allowed leave of absence to travel by the government of Bonaparte, in whose hands he was a prisoner, he returned to Greece accompanied by the Italian artist Simone Pomardi, touring mainland Greece and the Ionian Islands meeting again with Sir William Gell towards the end of the tour. During this second tour he and Pomardi produced around 1000 drawings which would become the basis for A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece during the years 1801, 1805 and 1806 published in 1819, the work was dedicated to Le Chevalier who had arranged his parole. "The Dodwell-Pomardi practice was to draw freehand on the spot if the landscape or ruin was condensed into a particular feature rather than an extensive view, often in pen in grey or sepia ink and wash if by Pomardi, and more roughly in pencil if by Dodwell; much more deliberate drawing followed, with the assistance of the camera obscura if a more detailed and complex composition was required — without it, Pomardi and Dodwell would have produced far fewer illustrations. The finished drawings were developed later, in Italy, from a compilation of outlines, sketches and precise notes; on these, both men worked together in a concerted campaign to reach a definitive publishable stage, probably with the assistance of other artists," [ Brian Sewell ;"In Search of Classical Greece: Travel Drawings of Edward Dodwell And Simone Pomardi 1805-1806," British Museum - exhibition review] The Classical Tour is illustrated with lithographs of the drawings as the intended aquatint illustrations proved too expensive to produce. Thirty aquatint plates were chosen to be issued separately as Views in Greece published in 1821. Dodwell settled in Italy after his return, living chiefly in Naples and Rome. He had amassed a large collection of ancient artifacts including the well-known Dodwell Vase with a representation of a boar-hunt; at his death the collection consisted of over 1000 pieces and even more mineral specimens; the collection of vases is now in the possession of the Munich Glyptothek He died in Rome from the effects of an illness contracted in 1830 during a visit of exploration to the Sabine Mountains. His last work, "Views and Descriptions of Cyclopian or Pelasgic Remains in Italy and Greece", was published posthumously" in 1834. " Dodwell and Pomardi, like many travellers, chose to go beyond the established Mediterranean regions of the Grand Tour. The understanding these travellers brought to the archaeological remains of ancient Greece encouraged the taste among British Hellenists for Greek architecture. This gave new vigour to the Greek Revival, already begun in the middle of the 18th century by the expeditions of the Society of Dilettanti. Hellenism, the love of ancient Greece, was to promote a new movement of Philhellenism, a sympathy for modern Greek people and a desire to realise the dream, as Byron put it, "that Greece might still be free." [Catalogue British Museum "In Search of Classical Greece: Travel Drawings of Edward Dodwell And Simone Pomardi 1805-1806,"] Simone Pomardi 1757-1830 Little is known of him — nothing between records of his birth in 1757 and his settling in an artists' neighbourhood in Rome in 1783, nothing of his training and the influences to which he may have been subject, and from a working life of more than half a century, fewer than 50 works independent of Dodwell are known, their subjects mostly the antiquities of Rome. He would publish his own work about the travel with Dodwell "Viaggio nella Grecia fatto negli anni 1804, 1805 e 1806 "published in Rome in 1820 by Vincenzo Poggioli often using the same illustrations. Atabey:357;Blackmer/Navari: 493; Abbey, Travel: 130; Colas 876; Weber I: 1110. Greece Continental Greece Thermopylae