The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus has been an enthralling monument since its creation, yet its reception and afterlife have witnessed a large degree of variation over time.1 The most comprehensive explorations of its historiography have defined the monument’s excavation as a pivotal moment, when the most dramatic changes took place in the perception and reconstruction of the Mausoleum.2 British architect Charles Robert Cockerell (1788–1863) was listed by these authors as one of the before-excavation group, whose primary aim was to revise the existing historical record and present a visual interpretation of the Mausoleum. Yet, unlike his predecessors who could work only with textual sources from Antiquity, he had access to fragments of the monument that were uncovered and brought to London in 1846. While his attempts were thus among the very last reconstructions that could not make use of the measurements of the Mausoleum’s foundations established by Charles Newton in 1856–1857, they were simultaneously among the first that could rely on the study of some fragmentary remains of the building. Cockerell made several attempts at reconstruction drawings of the monument, both in sketches and watercolours.3 He created a defining image of the Mausoleum (Fig. 14.1), and gave an account, in the Classical Museum (1848), of his interpretation of the newly identified fragments of bas-reliefs and carvings from Halicarnassus, which he connected to Pliny the Elder’s written record (Appendix i.iv).4

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the myth of the Wonders of the Ancient World chiefly fuelled two different cultural traditions in Western Europe. The first revolved around the idea that the Wonders were a mere metaphor for the vanity of ancient rulers. This literary topos can be traced back to Antiquity (where it appears in the works of Lucian and Pliny, among others), but was later to become a leitmotif of Christian moralistic literature.1 It is precisely in the wake of this secular tradition that Maarten van Heemskerck and Philips Galle in Antwerp (1572), and later Antonio Tempesta in Rome (1608), produced successful series of plates, the first being deeply imbued with Christian spiritualism, the second explicitly placed under the Neo-Stoic authority of Justus Lipsius (Figs. 6.1 and 2.5).2 The second tradition relating to the Wonders was chronologically shorter and less widespread: it was fostered by the attempted reconstructions proposed from the end of the fifteenth century onwards by antiquarians and architects following the Vitruvian model, who based their visualisations on the (insufficient) indications provided by ancient writers (Fig. 3.2).3 Naturally, there were numerous contaminations and transfers between these two traditions, even though their respective followers were typically driven by distinct goals and interests: while the former’s intent was chiefly allegorical, the latter sought answers to historical-architectural questions.

The Maussolleion at Halikarnassos (or Mausoleum of Halicarnassus),1 the monumental tomb erected to commemorate satrap Maussollos of Karia, was included in some of the very first Hellenistic lists of the Seven Wonders of the World, including that established by Antipater of Sidon in the second century bc (Appendix i.i).2 Other ancient texts attest to the widespread fame achieved by the monument and the strong impression it produced on travellers. Though it has often been stated – with reason – that among the Seven Wonders, only the pyramids of Egypt have survived to the present age, it is now possible to reconstruct the essential features of the Maussolleion. The present chapter will grant an overview of the findings and hypotheses developed by archaeologists, while also replacing the monument within its historical and cultural context. It will attempt to come as close as possible to the historical reality of a monument that has enjoyed such a significant impact – though often as a symbol, a source of inspiration or a purely imaginary vision rather than as an object of precise documentation and enquiry – on the shaping of modern European culture.

Around 1814, Prussian architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) created an imaginary view of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, intended as the preliminary sketch for a large-scale painting that was to be publicly exhibited in Berlin as part of a Seven Wonder diorama entitled Zyklus der Sieben Weltwunder. The first exhibition of the series took place that same year in Carl Wilhelm Gropius’s so-called Optisch-Mechanisches Figurentheater in Berlin. The drawing having been lost during World War II, the only surviving photographic reproduction is to be found in a publication from 1939. Dioramas were primarily a commercial venture, serving purposes both of entertainment and public education. Very few of the numerous views created by Schinkel for these projects have survived, nor are any comments on these works by the architect known to us.

Among the impulses inspiring sixteenth-century interest in the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was curiosity about the form of the – no longer extant – Wonder, as witnessed by attempts to reconstruct it from ancient verbal descriptions.1 Architects in the Sangallo circle, for example, exploring ideas for tombs and tomb chapels, attempted to plot out the structure,2 while draughtsmen like Maarten van Heemskerck recreated it for printmakers to produce depictions of the ancient Wonders.3 A different motivation, by those seeking prototypes to promote women rulers, prompted interest in the Mausoleum’s patron, Artemisia II of Caria (died c. 350 bc). Renaissance culture’s respect for the authority of Antiquity led poets, encomiasts and iconographers to seek suitable ancient exemplars that might be employed in power imagery for ruling elites. Classical and later writers had lauded Artemisia as the builder of the monumental structure at Halicarnassus honouring her deceased husband Mausolus, satrap of Caria (ruled 377–353 bc), whom she also succeeded. She regularly figured in anthologies of famous and virtuous women, written by Boccaccio and others. This queen – almost unique in her combined roles as inconsolable widow, ruler and builder – was therefore proposed as an ideal model for Renaissance women in, or seeking, positions of power.

In July 1814, the Baden architect Friedrich Weinbrenner (1766–1826) proposed a monument imbued with allusions to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus commemorating the brutal Battle of Leipzig, which raged from 16 to 19 October 1813. This pivotal clash, opposing Napoleon’s Grande Armée and its allies to Austria, Prussia, Sweden and Russia, marked the first decisive victory over France and the culmination of the Wars of Liberation from Napoleonic occupation, fast becoming a defining event for the German national consciousness.1 On his own initiative, Weinbrenner soon envisioned a comprehensive plan for the site of the battle,2 just as rising patriotic sentiments spread through the German intellectual elite after the victory over Napoleon.3 Large groves of regularly planted oak trees – intended to symbolise the sturdiness of the victorious soldiers – would have delineated a wide and open field. Four Doric prostyle temples at its corners would have accommodated lodges for guards, while Weinbrenner envisaged at its centre an architectural monument on a tall platform.

The second half of the eighteenth century in France witnessed the creation of a large corpus of architectural images and projects that either refer directly to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus or reveal significant similarities to what was then known of the monument. Although art-historical scholarship on this period has noted cases of engagement with the ancient tomb,1 the significant strand of French architectural history to which they belong has mostly remained undetected. This is all the more surprising since the Mausoleum – or at least its combination of colonnade, pyramid and sculpture – attracted the interest of many of the most celebrated French architects, including key Parisian figures as well as emigrated practitioners active at foreign courts. The present chapter will argue that this cultural environment witnessed the assimilation of several of the Mausoleum’s features into a mainstream architectural vocabulary, as a result of complex connections between scholarly reconstructions, looser quotations and more distant appropriations of its formal elements, perhaps implying no conscious reference to Halicarnassus.

Relying upon the ekphrases of Pliny and Vitruvius, the most complete surviving textual accounts from Antiquity, studies of the afterlife of the Mausoleum have often focused upon practices of antiquarian reconstruction and imaginative re-invention.1 Tracing changes and continuities in the image of the Mausoleum as they have developed over time, these analyses have centred upon exchanges between production and reception across different media and the shifts in meaning they entail. In this respect one might speak of a productive cross-fertilisation between text, image and architecture in the Nachleben of the Mausoleum. Historical and thematic investigation of this process will enable us to chart a series of transformations of the image of the ancient tomb, but also of the methods of antiquarian enquiry used to visualise its form and understand its meanings from the late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries.

In his Dialogi mortuorum, a collection of conversations held in the Underworld, the satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. ad 125–180) stages an exchange between Mausolus of Caria and the Cynic philosopher Diogenes:

Augustus II the Strong (1670–1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, is renowned for his extensive construction programme for Dresden, whose transformation into one of the most magnificent capitals in the German-speaking states was initiated under his reign. Among his most intriguing projects was the so-called Pyramid Building, which was planned for a site on the northern bank of the Elbe, but unfortunately never completed. This monument’s crowning feature, a stepped pyramid leading up either to a royal statue or obelisk, would have been a motif unheard of in European built architecture. The present chapter will identify and examine the probable sources for the two main alternative plans that were suggested, both of which ultimately refer to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The complexity of the design process will be underscored, as well as the importance of the ancient model within Augustus’s endeavour to assert his royal power through architectural statements. Further attention will be paid to the role of the monument – and of its reference to the Carian tomb – within broader schemes for the city of Dresden and the conception of the entire region within which the King sited his construction projects.

The appeal of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World led many authors to attempt reconstructing them on paper, thus giving rise to an exercise in speculation whose results would soon be published as engravings. These, in turn, would later provide models for series of paintings, which reflect not only a historical interest in the scholarly reconstructions but also a recognition of their aesthetic value.1 In this regard, one of the pioneers of a pictorial appropriation of the Wonders was Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574), who developed a fascination for the architecture of Antiquity during his long stay in Rome, a period that witnessed the discovery and assessment of many ancient remains and monuments.2 His endeavour led to the establishment of the canonical series of the Seven Wonders,3 defining not only the list of works but also the iconography for each monument, which would later become fully integrated within a collective worldview.

Chapter 2: Notes from Underground. Excavations in the Athenian Agora have revealed the most important site in the classical world for evidence from more than twenty metalworking establishments. All the bronze statues that Pausanias noted after his visit to Athens are gone, but some of the clay molds that were broken up and discarded in casting pits can be identified: a sixth-century-BC kouros, and a standing male wearing Classical drapery, the casting dated by fourth-century-BC pottery buried in the same fill. Processes and materials remained the same over the centuries. To corroborate the evidence from foundries, and to search for clues to wax, the lost ingredient in the lost-wax process, we examine not only the molds but also fragmentary bronze body parts. To judge from lead curse tablets recording adverse reactions to a few Athenian bronze-workers, there was rivalry between workshops. Finally, we investigate a Roman statue recovered in modern times from a riverbed in Syria.