A research project exploring “the practice of perspective” in the works of 16th-century French architect Jacques Androuet du Cerceau held at the British Museum has garnered the Daniels Faculty’s Georges Farhat a Visiting Fellowship from the British Academy.

The British Academy’s Visiting Fellowships provide outstanding academics based in any country overseas (and active at any career stage and in any discipline within the humanities and the social sciences) with the opportunity to be based at a U.K. higher education or other research institution of their choice for up to six months.

Dr. Farhat, a landscape historian specializing in the history of knowledge and technology as applied to garden and landscape design, will use his Fellowship to further develop his long-standing research on built-in optical devices and topographical perspective that has previously been supported by, among others, the Académie d’Architecture de Paris, the Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, the Descartes Centre at Utrecht University, the Society of Architectural Historians, and Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.

“This collection,” Dr. Farhat says of du Cerceau’s works in the British Museum, “is key to understanding the intertwined histories of perspective and landscape design in the West. Yet, despite growing scholarship on du Cerceau, the practice of perspective in his British Museum works remains a puzzle.”

Although du Cerceau’s oeuvre encompassed buildings, ornament, furniture and metalwork, he is largely remembered today for his detailed and often fanciful engravings of French chateaux, gardens and architectural elements. These works were influential among contemporary and later designers and even aided in garden preservation efforts in the 20th century.

For more information on Dr. Farhat’s project, entitled The Practice of Perspective in the Works of du Cerceau at the British Museum, click here. For more information on the British Academy’s Visiting Fellowships, click here.