ABSTRACT
John Summerson roughly reduces the Adam style to four sources: (1) Palladianism of the Burlington-Kent school; (2) French planning; (3) Archaeological in uences from Italy, Dalmatia, Syria and Greece; and (4) the in uence of Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Giulio Romano.1 e real nature of the Adam style is misleading, however, in so far as it seems to stress these stylistic sources at the expense of its profound relation to the intellectual development in Britain, especially in Scotland, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. It was their dependence on contemporary intellectual maturation that integrated the diversi ed aspects of their style. is was the most profound source of inspiration for their architectural exercises, and was in part the consequence of their liberal education and, above all, their intimacy with the rising generation of the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century.
