Gerhard, (Friedrich Wilhelm) Eduard
Posen 1795 – 1867 Berlin

Vases grecs, relatifs aux mystères.

Stuttgart & Tübingen, J.G. Cotta, 1839

large folio (715 × 610 mm), (1) f. (Préface | Tables des Planches), and twelve plates (numbered i–xii) signed Weng or Meÿer (or variations thereof).

In excellent state of preservation.

Printed wrappers (with title and imprint Griechische Mysterienbilder. Zum erstenmale bekannt gemacht von Eduard Gerhard. Stuttgart & Tübingen in der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung. 1839.)

Only edition of a work presenting nine vases and a bronze cista, examined by Gerhard in 1825–1826 in various Neapolitan private collections. According to the author’s Préface, the plates were produced from his own drawings in 1827–1828, as a supplement to his series Antike Bildwerke (1827–1844), where eventually descriptive text was published.¹ All the vases were unrecorded, except for the first, which Raoul-Rochette had seen in 1826–1827, and published in 1830.²

At the time of Gerhard’s visit, three of the nine vases were in the possession of the Neapolitan dealer Onofrio Pacileo; two belonged to Marchese Niccola Santangelo (1786–1851), Intendente della provincia di Capitanata (1823) and later Ministro degli affari Interni (1831–1847);³ two had belonged until recently to Pietro Luigi Moschini of Voghera, a captain in the army of the King of Sardinia, resident in Naples from 1802, whose collection was sold in 1824 to the royal House of Savoy; and two were owned by ‘Chevalier Lamberti’ of Naples (perhaps the dealer Carlo Lamberti, or else a ‘Major’ or ‘Colonel’ Lamberti). The bronze ‘cista mystica’ (pl. xii) had belonged until recently to Franz Freiherr von Koller (1767–1826), General Intendant of the Austrian army in Naples, whose collections were transferred after his death to Berlin.

The ten objects are described in the Tables des Planches as follows

■ ‘Divinités, sacrifices et punitionsde l’enfer; grand vase de la Pouille, possédé par Mr. Pacileo à Naples’ (reproduced on plates i–ii; details on plate iii/1–2)⁴ ■ ‘Pluton et Orphée; vase apulien possédé par Mr. Pacileo à Naples’ (pl. iv; reverse shown pl. iii/3)⁵ ■ ‘Scènes de mariage sur deux vases de forme et grandeur égale, cédés par Mr. Moschini au Musée Royal de Turin’ (pls. v–vi)⁶ ■ ‘Bain de femmes; vase du Cabinet Santangelo à Naples’ (pl. vii)⁷ ■ ‘Initiée élevée au trône mystique; vase de Mr. Pacileo à Naples’ (pl. viii; reverse shown on pl. iii/4) ■ ‘Le même sujet réuni au Bain des femmes initiées; vase du Cabinet Santangelo à Naples’ (pl. ix)⁸ ■ ‘Jeune fiancée jouant de la harpe; vase de Mr. le Chev. Lamberti à Naples’ (pl. x) ■ ‘Jeu du Ballon; vase de Mr. le Chev. Lamberti à Naples’ (pl. xi) ■ ‘Procession et initiation bacchique; dessin gravé d’une Ciste mystique en bronze, appartenant jadis à Mr. le Baron de Koller’ (pl. xii)⁹

As usual, the title-page in this copy is in French (‘Vases grecs, relatifs aux mystères’) and the wrapper-title in German (‘Griechische Mysterienbilder’). No copies with the title-page in German are recorded and citations of ‘two’ editions of the work most probably are erroneous.¹⁰

references Ernest Vinet, Bibliographie méthodique et raisonnée des Beaux-Arts (Paris 1874), p.191 no. 1556; Fabia Borroni, ‘Il Cicognara’. Bibliografia dell’ archeologia classica e dell’ arte italiana (Florence 1965), no. 11853 (3 plates only)