In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts by Dyson Stephen L

Author:Dyson, Stephen L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2006-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Adolf Furtwängler, shown here with his daughter, c. 1895, was the leading German classical archaeologist of the late nineteenth century and a pioneer in the efforts to attribute the originals of Roman copies to specific Greek sculptors (Girton Collège Archives, Cambridge University).

Photographs were not the only new instruments that Furtwängler had in his library as he pursued his research. The printed monographs, excavation reports, and catalogues had also changed dramatically in format and content. Perhaps most important for the archaeologists were the improvements in printing technology that allowed reproductions of photographs. Originally the publications had relied on etchings based directly on photographs. Then they found ways to reproduce photographs separately and insert them into the text. Finally printing technology allowed the reproduction of text and photograph together.

Another significant change was the appearance of more professional journals sponsored by the new foreign schools or professional societies that not only printed scholarly articles but also reported and even illustrated recent finds. In 1876 the Bulletin de correspondence héllènique was founded; and the Athenische Mitteilungen followed shortly thereafter. The British began producing The Journal of Hellenic Studies in 1880, and in 1885 the Americans got into the act with the American Journal of Archaeology.

Classical sculpture had stood at the center of museum and private collections since the Renaissance. For much of that period the collection of antique vases played only a secondary role. In the mid-eighteenth century this began to change. Classical collecting interests were extending beyond the aristocracy, and the acquisition of vases was economically more feasible for that expanding world of potential collectors. These collectors did not just acquire originals. As entrepreneurs like Josiah Wedgwood sought to combine new ceramic production techniques with the stylistic identification with classical artistic values, Britain became the greatest producer of ceramics in the world. It is significant that Wedgwood named his production center Etruria at a time when the painted vases that we now know to be Greek were regarded as Etruscan.78

A very different collector was Lord William Hamilton, another formative figure in the study of Greek vases. Hamilton was British ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1764 to 1800, a time when Britain was engaged in deadly struggle for the control of the Mediterranean. To most Hamilton is best known as the tolerant husband whose young wife was the mistress of Lord Nelson. But Hamilton was also an eighteenth-century man of science, much interested in volcanoes, and a formidable collector, who during his period as ambassador had access to the rich sites of Campania.79

Hamilton’s collecting interests focused on classical vases, which frequently appeared in the tombs that were the principal objects of Neapolitan excavations during that period. He built up two substantial collections of vases as well as other objects during the course of his lifetime. The first he sold to the British Museum in 1772, one of the major early additions to that museum. He soon started gathering a second collection, much of which was lost in a shipwreck in 1798.

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