SEROUX d'AGINCOURT, JEAN-BAPTISTE-LOUIS-GEORGES. - French archaeologist and numismatist, born at Beauvais (France) on 5 April 1730, died at Rome on 24 September 1814 and buried in S. Luigi dei Francesi.
In 1778 he set out for England, Holland and Germany; the following year he visited Italy and settled in Rome, where he prepared his major work *Histoire de l'art par les monuments depuis sa décadence au IVe siècle jusqu'à son renouvellement au XVIe*, 6 vols., Paris 1810-23, with 325 plates; the work was translated into Italian by St. Picozzi (Prato 1829) and again at Mantua in 1841. Some analytical plates were edited by Gence. S. d'A. published in this work some unpublished paintings; unfortunately, following the bad practice begun by M. A. Boldetti, he contributed to the ruin of cemetery frescoes by attempting to detach them from the walls, as he did at Priscilla in the Greek chapel with the personifications of the seasons, even leaving his signature on the wall. The original manuscript is preserved in the Vatican Library (cod. Vat. lat. 9839-49). For Christian archaeology the plates 9-13 are of interest for architecture, plates 4-8 for sculpture and plates 6-12.
In 1814 his last work appeared: *Recueil de fragments de sculpture antique en terre cuite*.
SERLIO, SEBASTIANO - Design for a Venetian house façade. Example from the Biblioteca nazionale - Rome.
His treatise, of which later appeared Book III in 1540, Books I and II in 1545, Book V in 1547; the book *delle porte* in 1551—these last four in France, where S. had gone as early as 1541—; Book VII, posthumous, in 1575, at Frankfurt; Book VIII is lost and a draft of it, together with Book VI, is found in the State Library of Munich.
The foundation of Serlio’s culture is an unconstrained amateurism that, resting on a broad base of untrammelled Northern culture, gathers together the most diverse experiences, with the aim of creating a repertoire of forms readily adaptable to the most varied building purposes. In this attempt at synthesis Vitruvius is by no means sacrosanct, nor indeed any of the components proposed: everything must be weighed with the aid of reason.
Serlio’s work exercised a notable influence on the theory and practice of architecture in the second half of the 16th century, in Italy, especially in the Veneto, where his theories coincided with the ambitions of the cultured Vicentine elite, linked to the Accademia Olimpica and versed in humanistic architectural concerns. On French architecture of the late 16th century Serlio had a very considerable influence: because he introduced into a land momentarily drawn toward Renaissance novelty, but fundamentally anti-classical and Gothic, decorative and external forms of a ceremonial classicism, a veritable trappings superimposed upon an irreducibly different structure.