 Problems with some technical issues in projective geometry, and the rising standards of rigour at the end of the 19th century provoked attempts to axiomatise the subject. The task was taken up by Moritz Pasch, and most energetically by Italian geometers Pieri, Peano, and others in the second half of the 19th century, and they succeeded in giving a rigorous account of real and complex projective geometry in two and three dimensions (see Marchisotto and Smith 2007). But they managed at the same time to reduce the subject to a rigorous training for geometry teachers, and did not appreciate the avenues for research that they had opened. It was left to David Hilbert to revitalise the axiomatic approach to geometry (see Hallett and Majer 2004).