Marvell's re-imagining of anthropocentric architecture in Upon Appleton House

Marvell initiates the dynastic mythology that he fashions around Sir Thomas Fairfax in Upon Appleton House by re-imagining the concept widely known to early modern readers from Vitruvius’s De Architectura. At the start of Upon Appleton House Marvell’s speaker implicitly supplants this idea of an anthropocentric architecture with what might be called not so much its sacred as rather its incarnational counterpart. He puts forward the concept of an architecture that manifests renovatio and, hence, true humanity: the restoration within fallen humankind of imago Dei. The sophistication with which Marvell achieves this reformulation and in effect presents a sanctified Vitruvianism gives impetus to all that follows throughout the poem.