Greek & Roman archaeologyThere are 37 items
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Monumenta sepulcrorum cum epigraphis ingenio et doctrina excellentium virorum: aliorumque tam prisci quam nostri seculi memorabilium hominum: de archetypis expressa
Breslau [Wroclaw], Crispin Scharffenberg, 1574First edition of a suite of prints reproducing a sylloge of inscriptions and monumenta sepulchralia, compiled by a Silesian nobleman, Siegfried Ribisch (1530-1584), during his ten-year peregrinatio academica across Europe (1545-1554). A remarkable and highly desirable copy: fabric bindings of the sixteenth century are now seldom encountered on the market. -
An early Imperial marble altar or statue base, carved with bovine heads supporting a heavy filleted garland (after the altar now preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Lyon)
Rome, c. 1625Drawing, executed in pencil, pen and brown ink with wash, 293 × 225 mm.
This drawing of an unusually elaborate early Imperial altar or statue base was commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) for his celebrated “Museo Cartaceo”. Although better-known as a specialist in natural history, the draughtsman Vincenzo Leonardi also supplied Cassiano with drawings after the antique. In 1625, he was the only artist to accompany Cassiano on a legation led by Cardinal Francesco Barberini to France, where he documented for Cassiano objects of botanical, ornithological, geological, and archaeological interest. The altar recorded on our sheet is identified with one now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Lyon; it is speculated that it was already in France in 1625, and was drawn by Leonardi on this trip. Two other aspects of the altar by the same hand and also from the “Museo Cartaceo” are in the so-called “Franks volumes” at the British Museum (volume I, folios 150-151). Our drawing was exhibited in Rome together with other drawings and paintings from the Dal Pozzo collections (Galleria nazionale d’arte antica, Palazzo Barberini, 29 September-26 November 2000) and also in Biella (Museo del territorio Biellese, 16 December 2001-16 March 2002).
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Panel relief: a maenad striding to right, carrying flowers; two maidens adorning a candelabrum (‘Nuptiale Festum’)
Rome, c. 1630Drawing, executed in pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, laid to Stirling-Maxwell album sheet of wove paper, 128 × 288 mm.
This drawing of a panel relief showing maidens draping a candelabrum (‘Nuptiale Festum’) was commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) for his ‘Museo Cartaceo’, and later passed through the collections of Pope Clement XI, his nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani, King George III, and the antiquary Sir William Stirling-Maxwell. In the early sixteenth century, the marble relief was located in the atrium of Old St. Peter’s in Rome; after 1617, it was installed with its pendant relief of five female figures dancing (‘Nuptiales Choreae’) above opposite doors in the Salone of the Casino of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, on the Pincian hill. Its fame grew steadily and was assured by its inclusion (again with its pendant) in Perrier’s Icones (1645) and in Bartoli and Bellori’s Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum (1693). In 1807, the relief and its pendant were sold to Napoleon Bonaparte and sent to Paris; since 1817, both have been displayed in the Louvre.
The sheet was exhibited in 2001 (I segreti di un collezionista: le straordinarie raccolte di Cassiano dal Pozzo 1588-1657, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museo del territorio Biellese, Biella, from 16 December 2001-16 March 2002, edited by Francesco Solinas, Roma: Edizioni De Luca, 2001, p.230 no. 140, with reproduction).
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Study of the Borghese vase; Study of an antique vase from the Albani collection
Rome, c. 1710?Two drawings, uniformly executed in pen and dark brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, laid to Stirling-Maxwell album sheets of wove paper, 408 × 272 mm and 407 × 267 mm. Uniformly framed.
These decorative drawings were extracted in 1990 from one of the two albums of “Drawings by Italian Old Masters. Sculpture” assembled circa 1871 by the Scottish antiquary Sir William Stirling Maxwell. The two albums contained mostly drawings commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1637) for his celebrated “Museo Cartaceo”, a corpus of drawings of antiquities in Rome. After Cassiano’s death, the “Museo Cartaceo” was augmented by his younger brother, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo, then by Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who incorporated drawings inherited from his uncle, Pope Clement XI, including a hoard accumulated by the artist Carlo Maratti. While our two drawings might have been introduced into the “Museo Cartaceo” by Carlo Antonio, before ill health brought his collecting to a halt in 1685, it is more likely that they were executed in the eighteenth century, and were added by Cardinal Albani. Both vases are drawn in mirror image of the originals, suggesting that they could be preparatory drawing for an unrealised suite of large-format engravings of Roman antiquities (they do not correspond to any known prints).
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Collezione di tiramenti rari di celebrate statue antiche 1755
Rome, c. 1755-1765A series of forty-four large chalk drawings (circa 482/525 × 345/360 mm) of exemplary antique statues in Rome, perhaps executed for an English patron, or with a view toward eventual publication in England, as they are scaled in both English piedi and Roman palmi. Nicolas Mosman is known chiefly by a set of drawings of paintings in Roman collections, produced between 1764 and 1787 for Brownlow Cecil, 9th Earl of Exeter. In Rome, Mosman was linked socially and professionally with the painter Mengs, the archaeologist Winckelmann, the painter-dealer Thomas Jenkins, and the restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi. His selection of sculpture reflects the revaluation of antique sculpture then being undertaken by Mengs and Winckelmann, and the commercial transactions of Jenkins and Cavaceppi. In addition to the narrow canon of masterpieces established by Mengs, Mosman documents recent additions to the Capitoline collection (purchases by Clement XII from the Albani and Odescalchi collections, and by Benedict XIV from the D'Este collection and from digger-dealers), and sculptures within the Barberini, Borghese, Casali, Farnese, Giustiniani, Ludovisi, Medici, Pighini, Spada, and Verospi family collections recently lauded by Winckelmann. Four drawings depict antique sculptures restored by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and introduced onto the market in 1754/1755, 1764, 1766/1768 respectively; another two are of modern sculptures: a bronze statue of Mercury by Guglielmo della Porta in the Palazzo Farnese and a marble statue of Santa Susanna by François Duquesnoy in S. Maria di Loreto. The drawings were mounted on album leaves in the nineteenth century, when a title-leaf and a contents-leaf were supplied, and the sheets numbered sequentially in ink. The date “1755” in the title perhaps was found on a portfolio that previously held the loose sheets; it could be the date of the earliest drawing, made soon after Mosman's arrival in Rome.
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Collection of engravings from ancient vases mostly of pure Greek workmanship discovered in sepulchres in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but chiefly in the neighbourhood of Naples during the course of the years MDCCLXXXIX and MDCCLXXXX now in the possession of Sir Wm. Hamilton… with remarks on each vase by the collector
Naples, Wilhelm Tischbein, 1791 [-1796]Fine copy of the catalogue of Hamilton’s second vase collection, gathered after selling the first to the British Museum in 1772, edited and illustrated by the German painter Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829), then director of the Naples Academy of Painting, assisted by the Russian ambassador at Naples, Andrei Yakovlevich Italinsky (1743-1827). This set includes the scarce “fourth volume”, a series of sixty-one plates without text, conceived before Hamilton’s forced departure from Naples (December 1798), but published afterwards, by Tischbein alone. -
Reliquiae Britannico-Romanae, containing figures of Roman Antiquities discovered in various parts of England
London, Printed by T. Bensley, for Cadell and Davies [etc.], [1801]-1813-1817 (but 1819)This sumptuous publication, representing nearly twenty-five years of work, illustrates mosaics found on numerous sites excavated by the author, a pioneer of field archaeology and also illustration, far ahead of his time in both discernment and technique. Although Roman mosaics had been encountered previously, notably by Sir Christopher Wren in his reconstruction of London following the Great Fire of 1666, systematic excavation was unknown, and few pavements had been drawn in situ and transcribed into engravings. Lysons’ scholarly publications ushered in a period of great interest in exposing mosaics, and the numbers of known examples multiplied rapidly. Since many mosaics reproduced by Lysons were later damaged by ploughing and gravedigging, in some cases wholly destroyed, his prints have acquired permanent value. -
Description d’un Pavé en Mosaïque découvert dans l’ancienne Ville d’Italica, aujourd’hui le village de Santiponce, près de Séville; suivie de recherches sur la Peinture en Mosaïque chez les Anciens, et les Monuments en ce genre qui n’ont point encore été publiés
Paris, De l’Imprimerie de P. Didot l’Aîné, 1802First edition of this beautifully-illustrated work documenting the mosaic mentioned in the title, discovered by labourers on 12 December 1799 at Italica in southwest Spain, reported to José Moscoso, a monk of the nearby monastery of San Isidro del Campo, and by him to Francisco Espinosa, a lawyer in Seville, who paid for it be cleaned and enclosed by a wall. Despite these measures, the mosaic was soon completely lost, and Laborde's work is now the primary witness. -
Il Museo Chiaramonti aggiunto al Pio-Clementino da N. S. Pio VII P.M. con l’esplicazione de’ Sigg. Filippo Aurelio Visconti e Giuseppe Antonio Guattani; pubblicato da Antonio d’Este e Gaspare Capparone. Tomo primo
Rome, Antonio d’Este and Gaspare Capparoné, 1808Finely-bound copy of the descriptive catalogue of a new collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures (including inscribed altars), hurriedly assembled to offset the loss of Vatican antiquities taken by France in 1797. Forty-four objects are described, each depicted in a full-page engraving, with the iconographies and descriptions of each work often accompanied by details of excavation provenance, identity of the vendor, condition and restorations. The binder of our copy, Franz Sebastian Voll (1783-1846), was born in Würzburg, and admitted to the guild of binders in Mannheim in 1807. His clients included the princely house of Fürstenberg, Grand-Duchess Stephanie von Baden, and perhaps Ernst August I, King of Hannover. -
Peintures De Vases Antiques Vulgairement Appelés Étrusques Tirées De Différentes Collections Et Gravées Par A. Clener Accompagnées D'Explications Par A. L. Millin Membre De L'Institut Et De La Légion D'Honneur Publiées Par M. Dubois Maisonneuve Tome Premier [-Second)
Paris, P. Didot, l’aîné, 1808-1810A finely-bound copy of Millin’s catalogue of about 120 vases, for the most part in private Parisian collections. The 150 large plates reproduce outline drawings of the designs on the vases. Millin’s draughtsman was Angelo Cléner, the pupil or associate of J.H.W. Tischbein, who had collaborated with Tischbein in the second Hamilton publication; some of the plates may be Cléner’s copies of unpublished plates for that publication. -
Les ruines de Pompéi, par F. Mazois Architecte, Inspecteur Générale des Batiments Civils, Chevalier de L’Ordre Royal de La Légion d’Honneur. Première Partie [title in volume III: Les Ruines de Pompéi, par F. Mazois…Et Continué par M. Gau, Auteur des Antiquités de La Nubie. Troisième Partie; title in volume IV: Les Ruines de Pompéi, par F. Mazois… Ouvrage continué par M. Gau, Architecte, Précédé d’Une Notice sur F. Mazois, par M. Le Cher Artaud, Membre De L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, et De L’Explication de La Grande Mosaïque Découverte a Pompéi en 1831, par M. Quatremère de Quincy, Secrétaire Perpétuel de L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres… Le Texte de la Quatrième Partie a été rédigé par M. Barré, Professeur de Philosophie. Quatrième Partie]
Paris, Imprimerie et Librairie de Firmin Didot (volumes III-IV: Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères), 1812-1838Very fine copy of a scholarly and thorough archaeological study of Pompeii, intended by its author as the beginning of a series on Paestum, Herculaneum, and Pozzuoli. Through the agency of Etienne-Chérubin Leconte, architect to Carolina Murat, Queen of Naples, Mazois had been appointed dessinateur de son cabinet, and given access to the excavations, still jealously controlled by the Naples Academy. From 1809 to 1811, he resided in the ruins, making hundreds of drawings. At the beginning of 1811, Mazois returned to Rome, where he apparently supervised the engraving of some of his drawings, and proceeded thence to Paris to prepare the text. The first fascicule was published in January 1813, and further fascicules appeared at irregular intervals thereafter. On New Year’s Eve, 1826, Mazois suddenly died, having just completed the first three fascicules of the projected third volume. His widow made available his drawings to Franz Christian Gau (1790-1853), and these were integrated into two further volumes: Gau wrote the text for the third volume, published in 1829; Louis Barré was the principal author of the fourth volume, issued in January 1838. -
Peintures antiques et inédites de vases grecs, tirées de diverses collections, avec des explications, par J.V. Millingen
Rome, Imprimé Par [Mariano] De Romanis, 1813First edition of an important catalogue of vases belonging to the author or in private collections, including that of Carolina Murat, queen of Naples. Sixty numbered plates depict in outline ancient Greek vase paintings of myths and three plates (lettered A-C) show the variety of shapes of vases. The vases are classified according to period (following Winckelmann’s broad divisions) and reproduced with unprecedented care and fidelity; they “are the first [prints] on which missing and restored portions are indicated” (Dietrich von Bothmer). The unsigned plates are credited in the text to the draughtsman Michele Steurnal (Steurnel), a porcelain painter at the Real Fabbrica in Naples, and the prolific reproductive engraver Francesco Giangiacomo. -
Collection des Vases Grecs de M.r le Comte de Lamberg, expliquée et publiée par le Comte de Laborde
Paris, De l’imprimerie de Didot l’ainé (volume II: Imprimerie de Jules Didot Ainé), 1813 [-1829]Magnificent catalogue of a selection of ancient vases in the vast collection belonging to the Austrian diplomat Anton Franz de Paula, Graf von Lamberg-Sprinzenstein (1740-1822). Formed substantially in Naples, during Count Lamberg's term as envoy (17 December 1778-15 November 1784), and augmented after his return to Vienna, the collection grew to comprise more than 700 vases. In 1815, in a move to forestall an intended sale of the collection to Ludwig von Bayern, some 670 vases were acquired for the imperial museums by Franz I, Emperor of Austria, in return for 125,000 Guilders (the vases were afterwards incorporated in the Kunsthistorisches Museum). The work appeared in eighteen livraisons; subscribers could choose between copies printed on papier vélin (as here), or copies on the same paper, but with the plates avant la lettre. The plates in all copies are aquatints printed in colour, using mainly black and ochre together with mauve, brown or grey. The first plate is a general view of the collection, engraved by Benedikt Piringer (1780-1826) after a watercolour executed in 1791 by Carl Schütz. One of the title-prints is indistinctly signed Dien (presumably Claude Marie François Dien, 1773-1842); the other plates and vignettes are unsigned. -
Le Jupiter Olympien, ou l’art de la sculpture antique considéré sous un nouveau point de vue; ouvrage qui comprend un essai sur le gout de la sculpture polychrome, l’analyse explicative de la toreutique, et l’histoire de la statuaire en or et ivoire chez les Grecs et les Romains, avec la restitution des principaux monuments de cet art et la démonstration pratique ou le renouvellement de ses procédés mécaniques
Paris, Chez Du Bure Frères (De l’Imprimerie de Firmin Didot), 1815First edition (second issue) of the author’s speculations about the role of colour in Greek art and architecture, presented as reconstructions of about ten lost sculptures of Greek Antiquity, including the Chest of Kypselos (pls. III-IV), the Athena Parthenos (pls. VIII-X), the chryselephantine Zeus at Olympia (pls. XI-XVII), and a table for the Olympic Games, made of gold and ivory (pl. XXIV). The work fed a controversy concerning polychromy and the iconography of Greek sculpture. -
Introduction à l’étude des vases antiques d’argile peints, vulgairement appelés Étrusques: accompagnée d’une collection des plus belles formes, ornées de leurs peintures suivie de planches la plupart inédites pour servir de supplément aux différents recueils de ces monuments
Paris, Pierre Didot l’ainé, 1817 [-1834]Rare hand-coloured issue of a lavish catalogue of Greek vases, selected from more than twenty collections, including some already dispersed, such as those of Sir William Hamilton (1772, 1801) and Anton Franz de Paula, Graf von Lamberg-Sprinzenstein (1815). The majority of the vases, however, came onto the market during the long course of publication, as the collections formed by Joseph-François Tochon d’Annecy (1818), Sir John Thomas Coghill, Bt (1819), Jean Philippe Guy Le Gentil, comte de Paroy (1824), Joséphine de Beauharnais at Malmaison (1824), and Edmé Antoine Durand (1825, 1836) were scattered. Many vases are identifiable in permanent collections, in Berlin, Boston, Cambridge, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Naples, New York, Oxford, Paris, Philadelphia, Providence, Vienna, and elsewhere. -
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, 1817Only 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. -
The unedited Antiquities of Attica; comprising the architectural remains of Eleusis, Rhamnus, Sunium, and Thoricus
London, Printed by W. Bulmer and Co., published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; and John Murray, 1817Fine copy of the first edition. This work was the result of the second Ionian expedition sent by the Society of the Dilettanti to the Levant, undertaken between November 1811 and the summer of 1813. Its members included William Gell, Francis Bedford, and John Gandy. Their greatest discovery was the Temples of Ceres (now called Demeter) and other buildings on the site of the famous Eleusinian mysteries, and Eleusis is the subject of the first five chapters. -
Mosaïques de Lyon et des départemens méridionaux de la France expliquées et publiées par F. Artaud
[Paris], Debure & Didot l’Aîné, 1818-1822A rare set (title and 59 plates, engravings and lithographs) of coloured reproductions of mosaic pavements discovered at Lyon and Vienne, described by the founder of the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Lyon. Although work on the plates commenced in 1809, a prospectus inviting subscriptions for the work was not printed until March 1818; publication ceased after the twelfth livraison, distributed in 1822.Bound with Artaud (Antoine Marie François). Description d'une mosaïque représentant des jeux du cirque, découverte à Lyon le 18 Février 1806. Par F. Artaud. Lyon, De l'Imprimerie de Ballanche, père et fils, 1806
The second work in the volume documents a mosaic pavement depicting a chariot race in a circus, uncovered in 1806 in the garden of the pharmacist Paul Macors on the ramparts of Ainay.
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Gli ornati delle pareti, ed i pavimenti delle stanze dell’antica Pompei incisi in rame
Naples, Nella Stamperia Regale, 1822A magnificent work reproducing on a very large scale the Roman wall paintings and mosaic pavements discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum. -
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], 1822-1826Only edition of an ambitious work, dedicated to the memory of Sir William Hamilton, which aims to describe all manner of ancient “monuments” – vases, marbles, bronzes, coins, gems, etc. – then unpublished, or else inaccurately published, or susceptible of new explanations and observation.
