International Triangulation: Gottfried Semper, Jules Goury and Owen Jones. Journeys, Cultural Intersections and Innovative Perspectives

In the 1830s the journey to discover Italy and the Mediterranean was still linked to the possibility of carrying out new investigations which were able to modify the historical perspective on the ancient age, but also shedding light on unknown seasons of medieval architecture. Compared to the Grand Tour of the pre-Napoleonic age, on the one hand the possibility of moving towards increasingly distant destinations has grown and on the other the continuous acquisition of new knowledge enabled scholars to proceed with more complex systematizations. The journey to Naples, until now almost always the southernmost stage of the Tour, now often became the premise for new itineraries, towards Sicily and, if possible, towards Greece, Egypt and the Middle East. The possibility of proceeding with a comparative method in front of a much broader range of objects of study led to previously unthinkable critical assumptions. This is the case of two great personalities of the central decades of the century, namely Gottfried Semper (1803-79) and Owen Jones (1809-74). Their biographies intertwined several times during their existence and moreover the critical relevance of their studies is perfectly complementary. Acting as a further point of connection between the two is the figure of Jules Goury (1803-34), a French architect about whom not much is known, but who certainly played an important role in the studies – separately – conducted by Semper and Jones and in their subsequent reworkings. Never before has the experience of traveling to Mediterranean countries led to the creation of strong friendships and to the sharing of research objectives and future publishing challenges.