The Roman Stamp: Frame and Facade in Some Forms of Neo-Classicism

The Roman Stamp: Frame and Facade in Some Forms of Neo-Classicism by Robert M. Adams investigates how modern writers, artists, and thinkers have repeatedly turned to Rome as both a model of authority and a stage set for self-fashioning. Adams traces how figures from Mantegna and Scaliger to Swift, Piranesi, and Johnson appropriated Roman ideals—law, order, grandeur, severity—not merely as passive inheritances but as active instruments for rebirth, critique, or parody. With clarity and wit, ...