Imagining an Idle Countess: George Wightwick’s The Palace of Architecture
In 1840, British architect George Wightwick published a world history of architecture in the Romantic mode, inviting readers to enter a vast garden where Buddhist iconography rubs shoulders with Greek temples and Egyptian pyramids gaze upon Gothic cathedrals. His intended audience? Idle women. Matthew Mullane revisits this visionary but ultimately unpopular text, revealing the legacy of attempts to gatekeep the realms of imagination and fantasy pertaining to the built environment. more
The Public Domain Review is dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas – focusing on works now fallen into the public domain, the vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restrictions.
“Magnificent … A model of digital curation”
The Guardian
“… a gold mine of fantastic images and stories.”
The New York Times
Get Our Newsletter
Warburg’s Werewolf: An Anamnesis
Aby Warburg spent his life finding forms that could hold their own against the flow of time. All the while, as Kevin Dann explores, he was churning on the brink of madness with the sense that he himself was changing — into a terrifying animal. What kind of history would a werewolf write? more
