ABSTRACT
The contrasts between the British landscape-based approach to topography and the text-based approach of Italian scholars is already apparent in the collaboration between Sir William Gell and Antonio Nibby in their work on the environs of Rome in the early 19th century. Gell’s approach involved physically walking the landscape and making numerous measurements to map the location of antiquities. His collaboration with Nibby was intended to supply a closer knowledge of the ancient sources. What emerges from their notebooks is that Nibby rapidly learnt from Gell how to make the measurements for mapping and how to sketch landscapes. Yet when it came to publication, Nibby’s focus was textual, and he made little use of the visual aspects of the landscape. Gell’s concern for landscape links closely to the tradition of Ordnance Survey mapping that was a feature of contemporary British imperial practice; Italy’s different historical experience may underlie a continued emphasis on the textual.
