In the late 18th century, a French Huguenot and a non-English speaking Italian spent two months travelling around Ireland recording sites of antiquarian interest. Their 'treasure of antiquities' has been gathered by Peter Harbison - with a little help from William Wilde, writes Eileen Battersby
Imagine this - two men, a French Huguenot and an Italian, the latter without a word of English or Irish, travelling throughout the west of Ireland in the hot, dry summer of 1779. They are not tourists, nor are they spies but they do have a mission - to visit, sketch, draw and record ruins of antiquarian interest. For more than two months, the pair explore the countryside, meet an interesting cross-section of people, and have a series of adventures dominated by a carriage that persists in breaking down, while the Italian keeps falling off the horse he really does not want to ride. Along the way they encounter friendly aristocrats, see pretty women, enjoy hospitality and endure some suspicion - all the while sketching and recording historical monuments that even in their time were ancient ruins.
They were Gabriel Beranger, a professional artist who had settled in Dublin, and his friend Angelo Maria Bigari, a painter and architect from Bologna. About Beranger (c.1729-1817) little is known, about Bigari - a talented theatre designer whose feel for the theatrical is evident in his drawings such as that of Banada Abbey, Co Sligo, complete with funeral - even less.
Their labours that distant summer produced the most comprehensive archaeological survey conducted in 18th-century Ireland, and the first such project prior to the arrival of the Ordnance Survey in the 1830s. It is a great story, the details of which have been put together by Dr Peter Harbison through scholarly detective-style research carried out among National Library manuscripts and drawings, filtered through archaeological and art historical expertise, his previous work on Beranger and extensive research on another antiquarian, Austin Cooper, whose collection is the central source for this study.
The result, "Our Treasure of Antiquities", is an engaging narrative. The two artists emerge as real people, exploring an equally real landscape. The book also resounds with a sense of purpose and a powerful sense of history.
These 18th-century men are looking at the past with a sense of wonder, just as we are watching them over a bridge of two centuries. In some cases, it is as if they are looking at much the same sights we see today; the cloister at Kilconnell Abbey, Co Galway appears little altered, while the chancel arch and round tower of Temple Finghin at Clonmacnois as drawn by Bigari and now photographed by Josephine Shields, are identical. Another site to have apparently defied time is the chapel on Church Island in Lough Gill, Co Sligo. This juxtaposing of the then and now is fascinating.
Yet even more valuable - and this is where Beranger's contribution to Irish heritage has already been noted through Harbison's previous books on the artist, Beranger's Views of Ireland (1991) and Beranger's Antique Buildings of Ireland (1998) - is his recording of monuments now lost. One such vanished site is that of Claddagh Castle, Co Galway. A substantial tower house when sketched by Bigari, it has since decayed, leaving a mere stump.
Tristernagh Abbey, once one of Ireland's great medieval abbeys and so impressive in Bigari's original drawing, which includes a social gathering of sorts, is tragically unrecognisable as seen today in the facing Shields photograph. Also sadly reduced is the once mighty entrance gate of Ballylaghan Castle, Co Mayo.
The drawing, Beranger's View of the Druids Temple in the Island of Ennishowen, County of Mayo, reveals far more than an image of the Lough Mask monument. Harbison reports how he was alerted to its existence by a German academic who told him that the loose sheet of the drawing had been looted from a Belgian castle at the close of the first World War. It is characteristic of the many fascinating asides included in the text.
"Our Treasure of Antiquities", a phrase used by Beranger in a letter, acts as the title for a work that achieves many things, and most vividly evokes Ireland as it was a decade before the French Revolution. Archaeology, church and political history meet social history. Beranger and Bigari were central to a project devised by the remarkable William Burton Conyngham of Slane Castle. It was he who had brought together a select group of individuals, all sharing his interest in heritage, at a dinner which was held, as Harbison writes, "at his townhouse in Harcourt Place in Dublin one evening in February 1779". That night the Hibernian Antiquarian Society, with Burton Conyngham as president, was formed. It was an exciting time in Ireland, pre-Grattan's Parliament and only a few years before James Caulfeild, First Earl of Charlemont, in the company of others including Burton Conyngham, founded The Royal Irish Academy in April 1785. However, while the Academy, true to the pioneering Enlightenment-inspired intellectual vigour of its founders, exists to this day, the Hibernian Antiquarian Society proved short lived. By 1784 it was no more.
Such lamentation has no place in Harbison's lively book, which tells its story through layers of original pictures and subsequent engravings as well as letters and other documentary sources. While the main players are of course Beranger, Bigari and Burton Conyngham, the patron who sent them off in order to facilitate a possible volume on Ireland's antiquities, William Wilde also has a strong presence, as does Austin Cooper.
It is with a sense of adventure that the account proper begins, using Beranger's own words: "We set out from Dublin, June the 9th" for sites as distant as Inishmurray Island, off the Sligo coast. Access to Beranger's words is thanks to none other than the great Wilde. As Harbison explains, Beranger's diary has disappeared and that we can now experience glimpses of it is due to Wilde. It was he who revived Beranger's reputation through a series of articles some 60 years after the artist had died. These pieces were collected after Wilde's death in 1876 by his widow who had them published in book form.
Our debt to Wilde's research and interest also means that his presence lingers throughout the book, as does that of Burton Conyngham. Harbison makes no great claims for Beranger's art, and instead stresses its historical documentary value. He also acknowledges that Beranger brought more than an artist's eye to his drawings. "Beranger would appear to have been the first person," he writes, "to note down the close link in architectural detail between buildings such as Inishmaine, Cong and Ballintubber, which Harold G. Leask was to group together under the name 'School of the West' more than 150 years later and which has been the subject of a recent study by Britta Kalkreuter."
There is no doubt that Beranger was good company; he was an attractive character who liked women and they appreciated him. According to Wilde, who never met him, the artist was "spare in person, of middle height, his natural hair powdered and gathered into a queue; . . . a clear, observant, square-ended nose, that snuffed humbug and took in fun; clear, quick, brown eyes; a well-cut dramatic mouth, eloquent and witty." Here is a man who can ride a horse - and does so through Carrowmore and Knocknarea in Co Sligo.
Bigari obviously preferred to stay on the ground, and on one day "protested against all ridings". When investigating a megalith then accessible only through a bog, Beranger recorded that his horse "sank under me in the bog". Several hours later, and some time after his horse, Beranger returned on foot. "Mr Bigari was all this time capering about the room, and felicitating himself that he had not been of the party." Beranger elsewhere later noted his colleague was "an excellent dancer".
Early in their travels the pair, so obviously foreign, are viewed as spies in Clones, Co Monaghan. Once in the west, in counties Sligo, Mayo, Galway and Roscommon, they delight in their surroundings. From views of Croagh Patrick and Nephin, to Ballintober Castle and Multyfarnham Abbey, their trip is both familiar and eerie, lost and yet contained in time and a landscape that changes and yet endures.
Acknowledged as an international authority on Irish high crosses, Harbison's contribution to Irish heritage is as scholarly as it is diverse; this beautiful, entertaining book wears its learning lightly. By examining hundreds of drawings he has pieced together an extraordinarily vivid story built upon layers of history and human curiosity at its most appealing.
"Our Treasure of Antiquities" by Peter Harbison is published by Wordwell in association with the National Library of Ireland (€35)