ABSTRACT
The single critical move in Julien-David Leroy’s career was his decision to travel to Greece and to publish a magnificent book based on his research. It may be inferred from his background and education that his ambition was to gain recognition for his work from the foremost scholars and connoisseurs in Enlightenment Paris and to become a member of the elite French royal academies. In this he succeeded brilliantly. Capitalizing on family connections and seizing on contemporary interest in the arts of Greece, his publication was a private initiative that challenged the doctrine of classicism inherited from the Renaissance and served as a corrective to disturbing, recent trends toward license and disorder embodied by the rococo. Having studied at the Académie Royale d’Architecture and the Académie de France in Rome, Leroy was well positioned to understand the relationship between his research in Greece and debates about official arts policy in France. Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce was received as a contribution to reforming taste, establishing Leroy as the leading authority on architectural theory for most of the second half of the eighteenth century.
