Seven Ancient Wonders in the Early Modern World

This monograph is a study and catalogue of the artistic production of the Early Modern World including and evoking the so-called Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, plus an eighth, considered by scholars of the 15th and 16th centuries to be the Royal Monastery of El Escorial. Nowadays we often see announcements of worldwide votes to evaluate the inclusion of new monuments or buildings on a prestigious list, that of the Wonders of the World. This list, however, comes from a fascinating cultural tradition going back thousands of years, starting in the 3rd century BC in the Hellenistic period and has been maintained to the present day, with reminders of the identity of a perfect civilisation. For scholars and artists of the Modern period, the Wonders of the World evoked a symbol of magnificence and rivalry. This book is important and very innovative also as there is no in-depth study or monograph dealing with the transcendence of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in the Modern Age in configuring a collective European imagination and as a propagandistic image of power, or even these same aspects in the Contemporary World.