Riou, Stephen
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- Riou, Stephen
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(1720 - 80), soldier and architect; s. of a Huguenot; capt. Gren. Gds. 1741; studied architecture at Geneva U.; author of The Elements of Fortification [1746], Short Principles for the Architecture of Stone Bridges [1760] and The Grecian Orders of Architecture [1768].
1750 - 3 Naples, Capri, Rome (19 - 30 Dec. 1750) [south of France] Venice, Vicenza, Florence, Rome ( - 1752 - 7 Mar. 1753), Naples (8 Mar. - 13 Apr. 1753) [Constantinople - Feb. 1754 - ] [London late 1754]
Riou was in Rome from 19 to 30 December 1750, when he wrote to his mother having returned from Naples a 'few days ago'. Whilst at Naples he had crossed to Capri for one week, and been hospitably received by Sir Nathaniel Thorold, a merchant of Naples who was building a house on the island. At Rome, Riou announced his intention of travelling to the south of France, but this can only have been a brief visit, for he had just taken a house in Rome at 5 shillings a day for himself and a servant. On 6 March 1753 Riou was to write of his 'constant application for almost three years to the beauties of fair Italy', and he made two sets of drawings in Rome around 1752: a design for a Royal Palace (Windsor Castle), and a bound volume of eleven drawings (Hoc Opusculum Perfecit Romae Stephanus Riou Londinensis Anno N[ostro] S[ignore] 1752; YCBA). This volume also contains drawings of Sansovino's prisons at Venice and Palladio's Arch in the Campo Marzio at Vicenza, which Riou had visited in late 1751 (when he met the British resident, Sir James Gray).2 At some stage during his travels Riou also visited Florence, since he was to describe the Venus de Medici in a letter of 1762.
On 6 March 1753 Riou was in Rome, preparing to leave for a twelve-month trip to Greece and the Levant. He was sad to leave Rome, not because of the festivities of the Carnival, which he found frivolous, but because he would miss his 'Vernal & autumnal retreats' in Tivoli, Frascati, Marino, Albano and Gensano. He left for Naples on 7 March, Ash Wednesday, 1753, with Thomas Barton, with whom he was 'preparing the way for numbers of our countrymen who are to follow' (although Barton alone had been listed at Capua on 3 March3). They had heard from William Hutchinson, a merchant at Naples, that an English ship bound for the Levant, was soon to leave. On their arrival at Naples on 8 March they found that the ship was quarantined for fifteen days and, meantime, Riou became Barton's cicerone in Naples. He took 'infinite pleasure' in having a 'second view' of the area, and they found the Dutch consul Davel to be especially friendly. They met their friend the Huguenot Charles Labelye (the architect of Westminster Bridge, who had already been in Naples in November/December 1752) and together visited Vesuvius, Pozzuoli, Baiae, Posillipo, Cuma and Arco Felice. Of the antiquities Riou especially mentioned Herculaneum, although the excavations were not very far advanced, even the theatre being insufficiently cleared to observe with exactness. Below Posillipo he was impressed by the shell of a large building called the Palace of Queen Joanna, and near Pozzuoli he commented on a recently excavated temple with baths. With an introduction to the curator Camillo Paderni, they visited the museum at Portici where, 'contrary to express orders', Riou sketched a painting of Chiron and Achilles in his hat while his companions distracted the attendant. Modern architecture in Naples did not impress him, with the single exception of the Royal Palace by Domenico Fontana. Being at Naples during Lent, Riou heard the singing in church of the celebrated castrato Gaetano Caffarelli and felt that 'nothing can be more pathetic & graceful than his manner of warbling'.
Riou and his friends finally embarked on 13 April. On 17 April they were blown into a bay in Calabria and they only reached the Straits of Messina on the 24th. Riou was to meet James 'Athenian' Stuart and Nicholas Revett in Smyrna in May - June 1753. He was in Constantinople in February 1754, but he must have returned to England later that year for the Royal Palace designs (now at Windsor) were finished that year.
1. See Riou MSS. 2. See J. Bettley, Burl.Mag., 128[1986]: 582. 3. ASN cra 1257.
F. S.