A lost vase from the Coghill collection: "Ce vase représente d’un côté Bacchus barbu, et vêtu d’une longue tunique" (Plate XXXVII) View larger
A lost vase from the Coghill collection: "Ce vase représente d’un côté Bacchus barbu, et vêtu d’une longue tunique" (Plate XXXVII)
Millingen (James), 1774-1845

Peintures Antiques de Vases Grecs de la Collection de Sir John Coghill Bart publiées par James Millingen de la Société Des Antiquaires de Londres, et de l’Académie Archæologique de Rome

Rome, Imprimé Par [Mariano] De Romanis, 1817
Only edition of the catalogue of a collection of vases belonging to Sir John Thomas Coghill, Bt (1766-1817), mostly acquired from the antiquary Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754-1827), who was dispersing collections assembled by the banker Francesco Lalò, treasurer to Carolina Murat, Queen of Naples, and the Neapolitan collector “M. Bonnet”. De Rossi had intended to publish a catalogue of the Lalò vases and thirty-nine outline engravings already had been made of the most interesting vases. Those plates are employed here, together with thirteen new plates of Coghill’s other acquisitions. The Coghill vases were sold in London by Christie’s in June 1819, when many passed into the hands of the collectors Henry Englefield, Thomas Hope, and Richard Payne Knight.

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Subjects
Archaeology, Greek & Roman
Art - Collectors and collecting - Coghill (John Thomas), 1766-1817
Vase-painting, Greek
Authors/Creators
Millingen, James, 1774-1845
Printers/Publishers
De Romanis, Mariano, active 1789?-1824?
Other names
Coghill, John Thomas, 1766-1817
De Rossi, Giovanni Gherardo, 1754-1827
Lalò, Francesco, 19th century

Millingen, James
1774 – 1845

Peintures Antiques de Vases Grecs de la Collection de Sir John Coghill Bart publiées par James Millingen de la Société Des Antiquaires de Londres, et de l’Académie Archæologique de Rome.

Rome, Imprimé Par [Mariano] De Romanis, 1817

broadsheet folio (531 × 352 mm), (36) ff. letterpress, signed 1π1 (half-title) 2π1 (title) A–K1 1–241 and paginated (4) i–xx 1–48; plus fifty-two numbered plates, of which two (l, lii) are double-page.

Occasional spots in margins; otherwise a good copy.

bound in contemporary russia leather, covers decorated in blind and gilt.

Only edition of the catalogue of a collection of vases belonging to Sir John Thomas Coghill, Bt (1766–1817). A bachelor, John Thomas, had succeeded to the baronetcy in 1790, sold the family seat, Coghill Hall, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, in 1796, and retired abroad. ‘A great dabbler in art matters’,1 he acquired in Italy from the antiquary Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754–1827) a group of vases which had been assembled by the banker Francesco Lalò, treasurer to Carolina Murat, Queen of Naples.2 To these he added a smaller number of vases, said to have been collected in Naples by a ‘M. Bonnet’ (f. A1 recto, Avis de l’Editeur).

A lost vase from the Coghill collection: ‘Ce vase représente d’un côté Bacchus barbu, et vêtu d’une longue tunique’ (Plate xxxvii)

The catalogue is preceded by three discourses by De Rossi addressed to Millingen. In the first (dated Rome, 10 March 1816), De Rossi recounts how the vase painters used a stylus to sketch the decoration onto the vases, invariably copying (he believed) an exemplar in their studio; in the second (from Rome, 31 March 1816), he asserts that the painters did not themselves conceive this decoration, but copied instead terra cotta models of marble sculptures; and in the third (dated Rome, 15 April 1816), he devotes his attention to those vases depicting bacchanalian scenes in relief and black or dark colours, then consid­ered to be Sicilian and of great antiquity.

De Rossi had intended to publish a catalogue of the Lalò vases and thirty-nine outline engravings already had been made of the most interesting vases. Those plates are employed here, together with thirteen new plates of Coghill’s other acquisitions.

Sir John Thomas died at Caen, in Normandy, on 21 May 1817; it is doubtful that he saw the printed catalogue. His collections were brought back to England and the vases sold by auc­tion at Christie’s in June 1819,3 when many passed into the hands of the collectors Henry Englefield,4 Thomas Hope,5 and Richard Payne Knight. A number of Coghill’s vases are now located in permanent collections in Cambridge,6 Lisbon,7 London,8 Los Angeles,9 New York,10 Oxford,11 Paris,12 and Vienna;13 most can not be traced.

references Fabia Borroni Salvadori, ‘Il Cicognara.’ Bibliografia dell’ archeologia classica e dell’arte italiana (Florence 1957), ii/1, p.274 no. 668; Leonora Navari, Greece and the Levant: the catalogue of the Henry Myron Blackmer collection of books and manuscripts (London 1989), p.239 no. 1134

1. James Henry Coghill, The family of Coghill, 1377 to 1879 (Cambridge 1879), pp.29–30.

2. La Repubblica napoletana: diari, memorie, racconti, edited by Mario Battaglini (Milan 2000), p.96.

3. ‘A catalogue of a truly capital, select, and highly valuable collection of painted Greek vases… the property of Sir John Coghill, Bart. Deceased’, London, 18–19 June 1819.

4. Henry Moses, Ancient vases from the collection of Sir Henry Englefield, Bart (London 1848), pp.5–8 and plates xv–xvi, xxi, xxii–xxiii, xxvii–xxviii.

5. E.M.W. Tillyard, The Hope Vases: a catalogue (Cambridge 1923), nos. 65 (lost), 90 (lost), 106 (Ashmolean), 116 (Gulbenkian), 126 (Ashmolean), 130 (lacma), 141 (lost), 213 (lost).

6. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Plate 22/1: 37:24; pl. 34/1: 37.8.

7. Museu G. Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Plates 1–3: 682 (ex-Hope collection; Tillyard, op. cit., no. 116).

8. British Museum, London. Plate 11: 1924,0716.1; pl. 38 (ex-Richard Payne Knight): b554 (1824,0501.6); pl. 39 (ex-Richard Payne Knight): b554 (1824,0501.5); pl. 44: f101 (1856,0512.12).

9. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. Plate 41: A5933.50.37 (ex-Hope collection; Tillyard, op. cit., no. 130).

10. Brookyn Museum, New York. Plate 8: 09.6. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Plates 12–13: 25.78.45.

11. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Plate 10: 1917.60 (ex-Hope collection; Tillyard, op. cit., no. 126); pl. 22/2: 1917.58 (ex-Hope collection; Tillyard, op. cit., no. 106).

12. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Plates 4–5: k570; pls. 6–7: g421; pls. 14–15 g230; pl. 18: g405; pl. 21: k387; pl. 23: g54; pl. 24: g347; pl. 25: g508; pl. 32/6: g577; pls. 49–50: g342.

13. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Plate 40: 774.

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