Millingen, James
London 1774 – 1845 Florence

Ancient unedited monuments. Painted Greek Vases, from collections in vari­ous countries, principally in Great Britain, illustrated and explained. [Volume ii:] Statues, busts, bas-reliefs, and other domains of Grecian art from collections in various countries, illustrated and explained.

London, [printed for the author at Paris by Firmin Didot], 1822–1826

Two volumes, quarto (341 × 202 mm):

i: (60) ff. letterpress, signed π⁴ (half-title; title; dedication; –lacking initial blank leaf, π₁) *⁴ 1–7⁴ 8⁴ (including sub-title; –8₄, cancelled) 1–4⁴ 5² 6⁴ and paginated (6) i–viii 1–105 (1), with coloured vignette on title-page; plus forty-two engraved plates (designated i–xl, a–b) of which forty are printed in black and red with additional hand-colouring, some plates with two or more images, six of the plates double-page (nos. x, xv, xvi, xxi, xxii, a). Plate xx signed Thiery Sculp; plate xxii signed St. Anges Desmaisons scupt.

ii: (23) ff. letterpress, signed π⁴ (half-title; title; Preface; –lacking initial blank leaf, π₁) 1–5⁴ 5² 6⁴ and paginated (4) (i)–ii 1–40, with engraved vignette on title-page; plus twenty-two plates (designated i–xx, iv[bis], v[bis]), of which ten are lithographs on china paper, and the remainder engravings and aquatints (some plates with two images). Plate iv bis signed Bossi del.t | Mougeot sc; plate v bis signed Normand fils sculp; plate vi signed Laguiche del.t | Mougeot sc; plate vii signed Fragonard Fecit | Lithographi of Villain; plate vii signed L Dupré | Lithography of Motte; plate ix signed Jorand fecit 1826 | Lith. de Engelmann; plate x signed Jorand fecit 1825 | Lith. de G. Engelmann; plate xi signed Vauthier, Fec.t | Lith. of Villain; plate xii signed L. Dupré del.t | Lith. of C. Motte; plate xiii signed Barathier. Fecit. | Lith. of Villain; plate xiii signed Jorand del. | Lith. of G. Engelmann; plate xiv signed J.A. Cahusac del.t; plate xvii signed Bossi del. t | Normand fils sculp.t; plate xix signed Lith. of Villain; plate xx signed Jorand fecit 1826 | Lith. of Engelmann.

Occasional foxing, mostly confined to text and tissue interleaves.

bound uniformly in contemporary russia leather, covers and back decorated in gilt.

Only edition of an ambitious work, dedicated to the memory of Sir William Hamilton, which aimed to describe all manner of ancient ‘monuments’ – vases, marbles, bronzes, coins, gems, etc. – which were unpublished, or else inaccurately pub­lished, or susceptible of new explanations and observation. It was conceived in sixteen fascicules, each to be confined to monuments of one type, and appearing at quar­terly intervals; the first two num­bers (both relating to Greek vases) were distributed in July 1822.¹ The author had already published works in French and Italian and acquired a European reputa­tion.

Image

Fragment of a Ioutrophoros-amphora (upper register of obverse), depicting the Descent of Persephone (i, plate xvi), from the second Hamilton and Hope collections (now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, 5040)

The objects described were scattered across Europe, mostly in private collections, including those of the author;² Thomas Burgon (1787–1858);³ William Martin Leake (1777–1860);⁴ John Hawkins (1761–1841), of Bignor Park, Sussex;⁵ Mrs. C. Edwards, of Harrow;⁶ Thomas Hope (1769–1831);⁷ Sir Sandford Graham (1788–1852);⁸ ex–Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803);⁹ ex-Sir Richard Payne Knight (1751–1824);¹⁰ ex-Charles Townley (1737–1805);¹¹ John Izard Middleton (1785–1849), in South Carolina;¹² Frédéric, comte de Clarac (1777–1847), in Paris;¹³ Edmé-Antoine Durand (1768–1835), in Paris;¹⁴ the Neri family collection, in Florence;¹⁵ Jacob Salomon Bartholdy (1779–1825), in Rome;¹⁶ Sig. Panetieri, in Girgenti, Sicily;¹⁷ Francesco Carelli (1758–1832), in Naples;¹⁸ and Giuseppe de Crescenza, in Naples.¹⁹ A few of the vases shown had been transferred from the Vatican to Paris in 1798, and not returned.²⁰

During the 1820s Millingen was dividing his time between Italy and France. He appears to have instructed English draughtsmen and printmakers to reproduce the objects in English collections; all such plates are unsigned, except for one (ii, plate xiv) bearing the signature of the draughtsman John Arthur Cahusac, f.s.a. The remainder of the plates were produced in Paris, by the draughtsmen Louis Dupré, Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Jorand, Laguiche, and Vauthier, in association with the printmakers Ange-Henri-Louis Saint-Ange-Desmaisons, Jean-Joseph Mougeot, Louis-Marie Normand, [E.-J.?] Thierry, in some cases assisted by the lithographic printers Godefroy Engelmann, Charles Motte, and François le Villain.

The work was printed in Paris by Firmin Didot.²¹ According to the printer’s announce­ments, it was projected in two series, ‘aura 13 à 14 livraisons, chacune de 2 à 3 feuilles, avec six planches’, with all copies of the edition printed on identical paper, and equally priced (fifteen francs per livraison, or 6 shillings in London).²²

After ten fascicules had been issued, Millingen curtailed publication, complaining of the ‘difficulty of obtaining access to some collections’, ‘the high prices required by artists’, and – doubtless his principal reason – ‘the small number of subscribers’.²³ In London, Millingen’s usual English publisher, John Rodwell, and the booksellers Payne and Foss, John and Arthur Arch, and Treuttel, Würtz, & Co., had been charged with receiving subscriptions.

references Leonora Navari, Greece and the Levant: the catalogue of the Henry Myron Blackmer collection of books and manuscripts (London 1989), no. 1135 (lacking two plates); Brenda K. Breed, The History of Greek vase scholarship: an exhibition of books documenting the collecting and study of ancient Greek vases in the eighteenth century, Houghton Library, Harvard University (Cambridge, ma 1997), p.11; Die Kunstbibliothek Bernhard August von Lindenaus: Katalog, compiled by Klaus Jena (Altenburg 2002), p.52 no. 1B 25a