Stackelberg, Otto Magnus von, Baron
Tallinn, Estonia 1787 – 1837 St. Petersburg

Die Graeber der Hellenen.

Berlin, G. Reimer (‘Gedruckt bei A.W. Hayn’), [1835–] 1837

folio (530 × 385 mm), (50) ff. letterpress, signed π¹ (title) ²π¹ (dedication to the author’s mother) 1–11² 1–7¹ 7[bis]¹ (cancelland) 8–25¹ and paginated (4) 1–44 1–14, 13–49 (1), with vignette on title, head- and tail-pieces printed with the text; plus engraved frontispiece, and seventy-nine engraved plates, of which 27 are coloured (nos. v, vi, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xxvii, xxx, xliv, xlv, xlvi, xlvii, xlviii, xlix, lii, liv, lv, lvii, lviii, lix, lx, lxi, lxviii). The descriptive text for ‘Taf. xvi’ occurs twice in this copy.

Some pages and plates are heavily foxed.

bound in russia leather, dyed green, decorated with a frame of gilt ornament; engraved ticket on violet paper Gebunden bei Ph. Selenka in Wiesbaden.

First edition of Stackelberg’s last book, an illustrated study of Greek tomb-reliefs and of objects found in tombs, with remarks on the burial customs of the Greeks. The work was issued in ten Lieferungen, com­mencing in 1835.¹ Twenty-seven of the engraved plates are hand-coloured, ‘reflecting the consid­erable contemporary interest in the poly­chromy of Greek art’ (Age of Neo-classicism).

Many of the objects described and reproduced have become well-known. These include the ‘Broomhall Throne’, a rare surviving example of Greek marble furniture, drawn by Stackelberg during his visit to Greece in 1810–1814, when it was situated ‘in Athen am Platze des ehemaligen Prytaneums’ (pp.33–35, with two views of the throne and a view of each relief). In 1835, Stackelberg assumed it was still where he had found it; in fact, the throne had been appropriated by the Earl of Elgin, shipped to England in the spring of 1818, and installed in Elgin’s galleries at Broomhall, Fife. In 1974 the throne was acquired by the Getty Museum in Malibu.²

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(Pl. xi) ‘Drei Lekythen aus Athen’, from the Fauvel, Burgon, and Lusieri collections. Burgon’s vase is in the British Museum (Reg. No. 1842,0728.979)

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Another of Stackelberg’s plates (pl. i, no. 3) illustrates a marble figure of a woman in high relief, broken from a large grave monument, found at Acharnae, Menidi, in Attica. This object was taken by Frederick North, afterwards fifth Earl of Guilford, to London, and reap­peared sometime afterwards in the collection of the Earl of Lonsdale at Lowther Castle. It was acquired in 1948 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.³

A late fifth-century grave stele decorated in high relief with a life-size figure of a Greek warrior, found near Megara, is illustrated pl. iii, no. 2. This object was brought to Cairness House, Aberdeenshire, by Thomas Gordon, who served with Lord Byron in the Greek War of Independence in 1821. In 1936 the stele was sold at Sotheby’s and shortly thereafter it entered the Worcester Art Museum.⁴ A bronze triple Hekate, found on the island of Aegina, and seen by Stackelberg in the collection of Louis-François-Sébastien Fauvel in Athens, is shown on pl. lxxii. It was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1964.⁵

Many of the vases illustrated once belonged to Fauvel, with lesser numbers in the collec­tions of Giovanni Battista Lusieri (pls. xi/3, xvi/2, xxii, xxix, xxxiii) and Thomas Burgon (pls. xi/2, xvi/1, xlv/1, l/1, li/3), and a few in the possession of Peter Oluf Brøndsted (pl. xliii), John Foster of Liverpool (pl. xxi), the late Lord Guilford (pl. xii/2), Linckh (pl. xix), and a Dr. MacMichael (pl. xviii). Those vases that survive are now distributed between Baltimore,⁶ Berlin,⁷ Cambridge,⁸ London,⁹ Munich,¹⁰ Newcastle upon Tyne,¹¹ New York,¹² Oxford,¹³ and Paris.¹⁴

In the Blackmer copy, twenty six plates are ‘coloured or partly so’ by ‘an amateur’. Navari believed ‘coloured copies do not appear to be known’, however another like ours with twenty-seven partly-coloured plates, from the library of Victor Duchataux (1823–1905), was sold by Christie’s, Paris, 9 June 2006, lot 132. Other copies containing coloured plates are in the Gennadius Library and Library of Congress (see respective opacs).

Our copy contains the engraved ticket of the bookbinder Philipp Selenka (1803–1850) of Wiesbaden, brother of Johann Jacob Selenka (1801–1871), Hofbuchbinder in Braunschweig.¹⁵

references The Age of Neo-classicism: the Royal Academy and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 9 September–19 November 1972, The fourteenth exhibition of the Council of Europe ([London] 1972), no. 939; Leonora Navari, Greece and the Levant: the catalogue of the Henry Myron Blackmer collection of books and manuscripts (London 1989), p.337 no. 1594