A CARVED 'GRAND TOUR' WOOD MODEL OF THE TEMPLE OF HERA AT PAESTUM AFTER DOMENICO PADIGLIONE, MODERN 140cm wide, 46cm high, 70cm deep Provenance: The Simon Neal Collection Paestum was the Roman name of Greek colony Poseidonia, which was established to the south of Naples around 600 BC. The temples were discovered in 1746 by the architect Mario Gioffredi. In the late 1760s, Vincenzo Brenna (1745 - c.1814) made cork models of the Paestum Temples for the collector Charles Townley. There are also cork models of Paestum at the Sir John Soane Museum, London, variously attributed to Domenico Padiglione (1756 - 1832) and Augusto Rosa (1738 - 1784) and dated to c.1820 and c.1777, respectively. Sir John Soane is known to have discussed the site on numerous occasions in his lectures as a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy and he owned a number of drawings of the site by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, said to have been given to him by Francesco Piranesi in 1779. The discovery of the Temple, with its fluted and baseless Doric columns stimulated a revival in the Greek style of architecture in England and was promoted by Soane, who perhaps used the Doric order more than any other architect towards the end of the eighteenth century.