Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor 9781407311302, 9781407340999

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BAR S2512 2013 WIEGEL & VICKERS (Eds) EXCALIBUR: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF ARTHUR MACGREGOR

B A R

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Edited by

Hildegard Wiegel Michael Vickers

BAR International Series 2512 2013

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Edited by

Hildegard Wiegel Michael Vickers

BAR International Series 2512 2013

ISBN 9781407311302 paperback ISBN 9781407340999 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407311302 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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PUBLISHING

Contents

Vita Arthuri����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 David Berry The published writings of Arthur MacGregor�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������2 An Anglo-Saxon gold finger-ring from Abingdon, Oxfordshire�������������������������������������������������������������������9 Lauren Gilmour Wonder after modernity: 16th century visual sources, 20th century ethnographic collections and ‘transition’ ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17 Assimina Kaniari Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632���������������������������������39 Timothy Wilks Collecting the overlooked: some baroque paintings from the collection of Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941)����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������61 Catherine Whistler Collections, sculpture and the changing fortunes of an eighteenth-century portrait bust����������������������������67 Malcolm Baker A Rare Collection: Oxford museums past and present��������������������������������������������������������������������������������75 Julian Munby The Bodleian Picture Gallery�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������87 Jon Whiteley Beauvalet de Saint-Victor’s ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’�������������������������������������������������������������������������������97 Claire Lyons The reception of the van Branteghem collection in Belgium �������������������������������������������������������������������105 Athena Tsingarida ‘His Royal Highness the Prints of Wales’: George IV as a collector of prints������������������������������������������113 Kate Heard Robert Pashley and the Pashley sarcophagus��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������121 Lucilla Burn Roach Smith and the antiquities of London: the sculptures����������������������������������������������������������������������127 Martin Henig and Penny Coombe A private library in 19th century Rome: the sale of Giovanni Pietro Campana’s library��������������������������133 Michele Benucci and Susanna Sarti Fable and history: Prince Poniatowski’s Neoclassical gem collection �����������������������������������������������������145 Claudia Wagner The Ancient World in the nursery: German tin figures of the 18th to 21st centuries �������������������������������151 ­­ Thomas Mannack A forgotten provincial English museums initiative of the 1830s: The Midland counties Natural History Societies, their museums and libraries�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159 H.S. Torrens Coda�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������183 Michael Vickers

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Vita Arthuri On 1 June 2008, a study day was held at the Ashmolean Museum in honour of Arthur Grant MacGregor. This collection of essays consists of papers presented on that occasion, as well as others added later. Arthur was born at Craigellachie in the Scottish highlands on 31 May 1941. He attended Aberlour High School until the age of fifteen, when he joined the Royal Air Force as a boy entrant. He served as an armourer until his twenty-first birthday, when he purchased his discharge. In 1963, he enrolled as a student at the Ealing School of Photography. He was hired two years later by the Ministry of Public Building and Works in Edinburgh, where he rose to the position of Senior Photographer. In 1972, he received his MA in Prehistoric Archaeology from the University of Edinburgh. He spent the next seven years working for the York Archaeological Trust, both as a researcher and as an Assistant Director. During that same period, he earned his MPhil in Anglo-Saxon Archaeology from the University of Durham. He was appointed an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum in 1979, and was promoted to Senior Assistant Keeper fifteen years later. He was elected a Fellow of St. Cross College, Oxford, in 1998, and was awarded his DLitt from the University of Durham the following year. During his time at the Ashmolean, Arthur oversaw the British and Continental archaeological collections from the late Roman Empire onwards. He produced catalogues of Migration Period and Anglo-Saxon antiquities, as well as popular guides to medieval, Tudor, and Stuart material. Since producing Tradescant’s Rarities in 1983, he wrote numerous books and articles on the history of the Museum. His work on the archives led to further publications, including a book on Sir John Evans completed in 2008. Through his research on the Ashmolean and other museum-related subjects, Arthur established himself as an authority on the history of collections. He co-organized the symposia ‘The Cabinet of Curiosities’ at the Ashmolean (1983) and ‘Enlightening the British’ at the British Museum (2002), and co-edited the published proceedings. He is co-founding editor of the Journal of the History of Collections and co-general editor of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. His book, Curiosity and Enlightenment, published in 2007, is the culmination of twenty-five years of effort. It is unquestionably one of the finest works on the topic. In addition to the history of collections, Arthur has a long-standing interest in the interaction between man and animal. He has written extensively on the subject, which continues to be a focus of research. He is a member of the scientific committee of the Paris-based research group, L’Homme et l’Animal, which publishes the journal Anthropozoologica, to which he has contributed. Most recently, his Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War I (2012) has appeared. Throughout his career, Arthur has been associated with many organizations. He is a member of the Society for Medieval Archaeology, the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, and the Oxford Archaeological and Historical Society. He is also a member of the Society for the History of Natural History and a Fellow of the Linnean Society. He has served as Director of the Society of Antiquaries and the British Archaeological Association, as well as Chairman of the Finds Research Group. He is currently a Vice-President of the Royal Archaeological Institute and President of the Museums and Galleries History Group. I am privileged to have had Arthur as the supervisor of my doctoral research, and to have followed in his footsteps at the Ashmolean. I join with the other contributors to this volume in thanking Arthur for his friendship, congratulating him on his retirement, and wishing him well in his future endeavours. David A. Berry

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The published writings of Arthur MacGregor 1974 The Broch of Burrian, North Ronaldsay, Orkney. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 105, 63-118. 1975 Barred combs of Frisian type in England. Medieval Archaeology 19, 195-8. Finds from a Roman sewer system and an adjacent building in Church Street. In P. V. Addyman (ed.), The Archaaeology of York 17, 1-30. London, Council for British Archaeology. Problems in the interpretation of microscopic wear patterns: the evidence from bone skates. Journal of Archaeological Science 2, 385-90. 1976 Bone skates: a review of the evidence. Archaeological Journal 133, 57-74. [with P. V. Addyman, J. Hood, H. K. Kenward and D. Williams, Palaeoclimate in urban environmental archaeology at York, England: problems and potential. World Archaeology 8, 220-33. Two antler crossbow nuts and some notes on the early development of the crossbow. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 107, 317-21. 1978 Industry and commerce in Anglo-Scandinavian York. In R. A. Hall (ed.), Viking Age York and the North, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 27, 37-57. London, Council for British Archaeology. Roman finds from Skeldergate and Bishophill. In P. V. Addyman, The Archaeology of York 17, 31-66. London, Council for British Archaeology. 1979 Combs and decorated strip. In J. G. Hurst (ed.), Wharram. A Study of Settlement in the Yorkshire Wolds 1, 128-30. London, Society for Medieval Archaeology. 1980 A pre-Conquest mould of antler from medieval Southampton. Medieval Archaeology 24, 203-5 1982 Anglo-Scandinavian finds from Lloyds Bank, Pavement, and other sites. In P. V. Addyman (ed.), The Archaeology of York 17, 67-174. London, Council for British Archaeology Bone, antler and ivory objects. In J. C. Murray (ed.), Excavations in the Medieval Burgh of Aberdeen 1973-81, 180-4. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Monograph Series 2. Edinburgh, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 1983 [editor and contributor] Tradescant’s Rarities. Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum, 1683, with a Catalogue of the surviving early Collections. Includes the essays The Tradescants: gardeners and botanists., pp. 3-16; The Tradescants as collectors of rarities, pp. 17-23; Collectors and collections of rarities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, pp. 70-97. Oxford, Clarendon. Ark to Ashmolean. The Story of the Tradescants, Ashmole and the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford, Ashmolean. Mary Davis’s horn: a vanished curiosity. The Ashmolean 3, 10-11 [with J. Currey] Mechanical properties as conditioning factors in the bone and antler industry of the 3rd to the 13th century AD. Journal of Archaeological Science 10, 71-7.

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Objects of bone, antler and ivory. In L. A. S. Butler and P. Mayes (eds), Sandal Castle Excavation. A Detailed Archaeological Report 1963-74, 284. Wakefield, Wakefield Historical Society. Three centuries (and more) of the Ashmolean collections. Museums Journal 83, 135-7. 1985 Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn. The Technology of Skeletal Materials since the Roman Period. London, Croom Helm; reprinted Oxford, Ashmolean 2003. [co-editor and contributor] The Origins of Museums. The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe. Includes the essay The cabinet of curiosities in seventeenth-century Britain. 147-58. Oxford, Clarendon Press. A Late Saxon sword from Crowmarsh. Oxoniensia 50, 281-2 Coin balances in the Ashmolean Museum. Antiquaries Journal 65, 439-45. Note on an ivory comb. In J. Blair and B. McKay, Investigations at Tackley church, Oxfordshire, 1981-4: the Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque phases. Oxoniensia 50, 38-40. Russian seals from Abingdon. Post-Medieval Archaeology 19, 156-7. 1986 [with R. Brownsword] False prophets? Four bronzes in the Ashmolean reconsidered. Pantheon 44, 5-9. [with A. J. Turner] The Ashmolean Museum. In L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (eds), The History of the University of Oxford 5: The Eighteenth Century, 639-58. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Ashmoleanské Muzeum v Oxfordu. Muzeologické Sešity 10, 67-77. 1987 [editor and contributor] Antiquities from Europe and the Near East in the Collection of the Lord McAlpine of West Green Includes the essay Earlier antiquarian collections represented in the catalogue, pp. 10-16. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. [with B. Spencer] An ampulla mould from Pirton, Worcestershire. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 140, 194-9. Objects of bone and antler. In G. Beresford (ed.), Goltho. The Development of an Early Medieval Manor, 188-93. English Heritage Archaeological Report 4. London, English Heritage. 1988 [with J. Clutton-Brock] An end to medieval reindeer in Scotland. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 118, 23-35. 1989 [editor and contributor] The Late King’s Goods. Collections, Possessions and Patronage of Charles I in the Light of the Commonwealth Sale Inventories. Includes the essays The King’s Goods and the Commonwealth sale: materials and context, pp. 13-52; The Household below stairs: officers and equipment of the Stuart court, pp. 367-86; ‘The King’s disport’: sports, games and pastimes of the early Stuarts, pp. 403-2. Oxford, Oxford University Press/McAlpine. ‘A Magazin of all manner of Inventions’: museums in the quest for ‘Salomon’s House’ in seventeenthcentury England� Journal of the History of Collections 1, 207-12 Animals and the early Stuarts: hunting and hawking at the court of James I and Charles I� Archives of Natural History 16, 305-18 Bone, antler and horn industries in the urban context� In T� Waldron and D� Serjeantson (eds), Diets and Craft in Towns, 107-28� Oxford, BAR Publishing� 1990 Skates� And [with Z� Stos-Gale], Analysis of inlays in jet� In M� Biddle (ed�), Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester, 94-5, 708-9. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 3

1991 Antler, bone and horn. In J. Blair and N. Ramsay (eds), English Medieval Industries, 355-78. London, Hambledon. Bone, antler and horn: an archaeological perspective. Journal of Museum Ethnography 2, 29-37. 1992 Bone and other objects. In G. Milne and J. D. Richards (eds), Wharram. A Study of Settlement in the Yorkshire Wolds 7, 54-8. York, University of York. Deer on the move: relocation of stock between game parks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Anthropozoologica 16, 167-79 Mobilier Anglo-Saxon de l’Ashmolean Museum à Oxford. In Les barbares et la mer. Les migrations des peuples du nord-ouest de l’Europe du Ve au Xe siècle, exh. cat., 63-74. Caen and Toulouse, Musée de Normandie / Musée des Augustins. 1993 [with E. Bolick] Ashmolean Museum. A Summary Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Collections (Non-Ferrous Metals), British Archaeological Reports British Series 230� Oxford, BAR Publishing / Ashmolean Museum Antiquarian attitudes: changing responses to the past in the museum environment. Nordisk Museologi 2, 6-18. 1994 [editor and contributor] Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary; Founding Father of the British Museum Includes the essays The life, character and career of Sir Hans Sloane, pp. 11-44; Egyptian antiquities, pp. 174-9; Prehistoric and Romano-British antiquities, pp. 180-97. London, British Museum Press. A pair of Late Saxon strap-ends from Ipsden Heath, Oxfordshire. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 147, 122-7. Die besondere Eigenschaften der Kunstkammer. In A. Grote (ed.), Macrocosmos in Microcosmo: zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450 bis 1800 (Berlin: Leske & Budrich), 61-106 Elias Ashmole’s intentions. In University Collections and the Law. Museum Management and Curatorship 13, 343-6 Sir Hans Sloane. Art Quarterly 20, 70-1. 1995 Les lumières et la curiosité: utilité et divertissement dans les musées de Grande-Bretagne à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. In E. Pommier (ed.), Les musées en Europe à la veille de l’ouverture du Louvre (Paris, Musée du Louvre), 493-518. Roman and early medieval bone and antler objects. In D. Phillips and B. Heywood (eds), Excavations at York Minster I From Roman Fortress to Norman Cathedral (London, HMSO), 414-27. The natural history correspondence of Sir Hans Sloane. Archives of Natural History 22, 79-90. 1996 Combs and comb cases. In R. A. Hall and M. Whyman, Settlement and monasticism at Ripon, North Yorkshire, from the 7th to the 11th centuries AD. Medieval Archaeology 40, 127. Horn comb. In B. Cunliffe et al., Chichester Excavations. Excavations at Fishbourne 1969-1988 (Chichester: Chichester District Council), 98-9. Horsegear, vehicles and stable equipment at the Stuart court: a documentary archaeology. Archaeological Journal 153, 148-200. King Charles I: a Renaissance collector? The Seventeenth Century 11, 141-60.

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Objects of bone, antler and ivory. In T. Rowley and M. Steiner (eds), Cogges Manor Farm, Witney, Oxfordshire. The Excavations from 1986-1994 and the Historic Building Analysis, 116-19. Oxford, Department of Continuing Education. Swan rolls and beak markings: husbandry, exploitation and regulation of Cygnus olor in England, c.11001900. Anthropozoologica no. 22, 39-68. [with S. Stow], The Canterbury Excavation Committee’s antler combs. In K. Blockley et al. (eds), Excavations in the Marlow Car Park and Surrounding Areas, The Archaeology of Canterbury vol. V, 1167-9. Canterbury: Canterbury Archaeological Trust. The Royal Stables: a seventeenth-century perspective. Antiquaries Journal 76, 181-200. [with M. Henig] Three Alsen-gems in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 149, 89-92. 1997 Ashmolean Museum. A Summary Catalogue of the Continental Archaeological Collections (Roman Iron . The Ashmolean Museum. In M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds), The History of the University of Oxford vol. VI pt. 1: The Nineteenth Century, 598-610. Oxford, Clarendon Press. [with M. Hook] Medieval England. Archaeological Collections in the Ashmolean Museum from Alfred the Great to Richard III. Oxford, Ashmolean. Collectors, connoisseurs and curators in the Victorian age. In M. Caygill and J. Cherry (eds), A. W. Franks and the British Museum, 6-33. London, British Museum Press. 1998 Antiquity inventoried: museums and ‘national antiquities’ in the mid nineteenth century. In V. Brand (ed.), The Study of the Past in the Victorian Age, 125-37. Oxford, Oxbow. Hides, horns and bones: animals and interdependent industries in the early urban context. In E. Cameron (ed.), Leather and Fur. Aspects of Early Medieval Trade and Technology, 11-26. London, Archetype. Les écuries royales des Tudors et Stuarts: personnel et personnalités. In D. Reytier (ed.), Les écuries royales des XV-XVIème siècles, 143-53. Paris, Association pour l’Académie d’art équestre de

Versailles.

Museums and ‘national antiquities’ in nineteenth-century England. In V. Brand (ed.), The Study of the Past in the Victorian Age, 125-37. London, British Archaeological Association / Royal Archaeological Institute. Tradescant and the Ashmolean Museum, Sloane and the British Museum: two early migrations from private to public sector. In S. Campbell (ed.), The Private Collector and the Public Institution, 64-81. Toronto: Toronto University Press. 1999 [with A. J. Mainman and N. S. H. Rogers] The bone and antler industry in Anglo-Scandinavian York, the evidence from Coppergate� In A�M� Choyke and L� Bartosiewicz�(eds), Crafting Bone: skeletal technologies through space and time, 343-54� Oxford, BAR Publishing� Strategies for improving English horses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Anthropozoologica no. 29, 65-74. The afterlife of Childeric’s ring. In M. Henig and D. Plantzos (eds), Classicism to Neo-Classicism. Essays dedicated to Gertrud Seidmann, British Archaeological Reports International Series 793, 149-62� Oxford, BAR Publishing� 2000 [with M. Mendonça and J. White] Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Manuscript Catalogues of the Early .

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[with M. Hook] Tudor England. Archaeological and Decorative Art Collections in the Ashmolean Museum from Henry VII to Elizabeth I. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. A seventh-century pectoral cross from Holderness, East Yorkshire. Medieval Archaeology 44, 217-22. An aerial relic of O. G. S. Crawford. Antiquity 74, 87-100. Bone and antler objects. In P. A. Stamper and R. A. Croft (eds), Wharram. A Study of Settlement on the Yorkshire Wolds 8: The South Manor Area, 148-54. York, York University. Objects of bone, antler and ivory. In Ludgershall Castle. Excavations by Peter Addyman 1964-1972, 160-8. Devizes, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. [with A. Headon] Reinventing the Ashmolean: natural history and natural theology at Oxford in the 1820s to 1850s. Archives of Natural History 27, 369-406. The Household out-of-doors: the Stuart court and the animal kingdom. In E. Cruickshanks (ed.), The Stuart Courts, 86-117. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. 2001 The Ashmolean Museum. A Brief History of the Institution and its Collections. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. [co-editor with H. Hamerow] Image and Power in the Archaeology of Early Medieval Britain. Essays in Honour of Rosemary Cram. Oxford, Oxbow. Edward Thurlow Leeds (1877‑1955). In Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 18, 191‑3. Berlin: De Gruyter. Objects of bone, antler and ivory. In P. Saunders (ed.), Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum Medieval Catalogue 3, 14-25. Salisbury, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. The Ashmolean as a museum of natural history, 1683-1860. Journal of the History of Collections 13, 12544. The collection‑history of the Botti Madonna. In H. Kaye (ed.), Andrea del Sarto: the Botti Madonna, 42‑53. London, St James’s / Courtauld Institute. 2003 [co-editor and contributor] Enlightening the British. Knowledge, Discovery and the Museum in the Eighteenth Century. Includes the essay The antiquary en plein air: eighteenth-century progress from topographical survey to the threshold of field archaeology, pp. 164-75. London, British Museum Publications. [with M. Hook] England under the Stuarts. Collections in the Ashmolean Museum from James I to Queen Anne. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Horses in the 16th and 17th centuries. In P. Connor (ed.), All the Queen’s Horses. The Role of the Horse in British History, exh. cat., International Museum of the Horse, 46-7. Lexington: Kentucky Horse Park. Objects of bone and antler. In P. Mayes (ed.), Excavations at a Templar Preceptory. South Witham, Lincolnshire 1965-67, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 19, 112-4. London, Society for Medieval Archaeology. Oxford. In Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde vol. 18, 418-21. Berlin: De Gruyter. Peter der Große in England. In B. Buberl and M. Dückershoff (eds), Palast des Wissens. Die Kunst- und Wunderkammer Zar Peters des Großen 2: Beiträge, 67-87. Munich: Hirmer Verlag. The Battle of Pavia and the Tradescant pictures. In T. Wilson (ed.), The Battle of Pavia, 17-18. Oxford, Ashmolean. 2004 [with M. Henig] Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Finger-rings in the Ashmolean Museum II: Roman. Oxford, Beazley Archive. L’aube des Lumières dans les musées anglais. In P. Martin and D. Moncond’huy (eds), Curiosité et cabinets de curiosités, 147-54. Poitiers: Michèle Mirroir. 6

Sir Hans Sloane. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 50, 943-9. Oxford, Oxford University Press.  John Tradescant, Father and Son. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 55, 199-203. Oxford, Oxford University Press. The Tsar in England: Peter the Great’s visit to London in 1698. The Seventeenth Century 19, 116-47. 2005 Worked bone and ivory. In M. Biddle, Nonsuch Palace. The Material Culture of a Noble Restoration Household, 419-27. Oxford, Oxbow. 2006 [with M. Hook], Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Manuscript Catalogues of the Early Museum Collections . Major Allen 1891-1940, Aerial Archaeologist, Iffley History Society Publication 11. Oxford, Iffley History Society. Jack of Hilton. The Ashmolean no. 51, 4-5. 2007 Curiosity and Enlightenment. Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London, Yale University Press). A cabinet of wonder. In The World of 1607, exh. cat., Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Williamsburg: Jamestown Settlement.

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E. T. Leeds and the formulation of an Anglo-Saxon archaeology of England. In M. Henig and T. J. Smith (eds), Collectanea Antiqua. Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, 27-44� Oxford, BAR Publishing� Jack of Hilton and the history of the hearth-blower. Antiquaries Journal 87, 281-94. Forming an identity: the early Society and its context, 1707—51. In S. Pearce (ed.), Visions of Antiquity. The Society of Antiquaries of London 1707—2007, Archaeologia 111, 45-73. London, Society of Antiquaries. Le polo, de l’Orient au monde entier. In D. Roche and D. Reytier (eds), À cheval! Écuyer, amazones & cavaliers du XIVe au XXIe siècle, 181-93. Paris, Association pour lAcadémie Équestre de Versailles. William Huddesford (1732-1772): his role in reanimating the Ashmolean Museum, his collections, researches and support network. Archives of Natural History 34, 47-68. 2008 [editor and contributor], Sir John Evans 1823—1908. Antiquity, Commerce and Natural Science in the Age of Darwin. Includes the essays: Sir John Evans, model Victorian, polymath and collector, pp. 1-38, and: Evans and antiquities from the Roman to the post-medieval period, pp. 131-50. Oxford, Ashmolean. 2009 Great expectations: collecting the Antique in Britain in the nineteenth century. In A. Tsinagrida and A. Verbanck-Piérard (eds), L’Antiquité au service de la Modernité? La réception de ‘lantiquité classique en Belgie au XIXe siècle, 43-63. Brussels, Le livre Timperman), Exhibiting evolutionism: Darwinism and pseudo-Darwinism in museum practice after 1859. Journal of the History of Collections 21, 77-94. 2010 Edward Lhuyd, museum keeper. Welsh History Review 25, 51-74.

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2011 The worked bone. In Perth High Street Archaeological Excavation 1975-1977, fascicule 4: Living and Working in a Medieval Scottish Burgh, 97-117. Perth: Tayside and Fife Archaeological Committee. Wedgwood meets the Bronze Age. In A. Dunsmore (ed.), This Blessed Plot, this Earth. English Pottery Studies in Honour of Jonathan Horne, 98-107. London, Paul Holberton Publishing. ‘The inspection of particulars . . . useful in medicine’: materia medica in the curriculum at the seventeenthcentury Ashmolean Museum. In S. Anagnostou, F. Egmond and C. Friedrich (eds), A Passion for Plants. Materia Medica and Botany in Scientific Networks from the 16th to 18th Centuries, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Pharmazie 95, 109-18. Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH. 2012 Animal Encounters. Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One. London, Reaktion Books. Medicinal terra sigillata: a historical, geographical and typological review. In A History of Geology and Medicine. Geological Society of London, Special Publications 375, ed. C. J. Duffin, R. T. J. Moody and C. Gardner-Thorpe, http://dx.doi.org/10.1144/SP375.1

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An Anglo-Saxon gold finger-ring from Abingdon, Oxfordshire Lauren Gilmour Abstract Several years ago an early Medieval finger ring of fine gold decorated with glass ‘gems’ and filigree ornamentation was found at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, where it is permanently displayed at Abingdon County Hall Museum. A detailed report by Susan Youngs of the British Museum accompanying its designation as a Treasure Trove find (finding ‘its soldered construction still in the tradition of the gold pendants and composite brooches of early seventh century grave furnishings, best known from Kentish cemeteries’) introduces a fuller discussion of two points raised by Youngs: whether the ring is ‘a sign of deliberate adherence to the new faith in the Conversion Period’, and in what way Abingdon was ‘a place of importance throughout the Anglo-Saxon period’, leading to a more detailed discussion of the ring’s dating, its unique combination of form and ornamentation, and what it might have to tell us about the wearer and her social context. Keywords Abingdon Abbey, Abingdon County Hall Museum, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, Anglo-Saxon (history, archaeology, society, religion), Black Cross, Christianity, Conversion Period, Final Phase (grave goods), Finger-ring (jewellery), Gold (jewellery), Metal detector, Merovingian, Treasure Trove, Women’s history

Several years ago a find of outstanding importance was made at Abingdon, Oxfordshire – an early Medieval finger ring of fine gold decorated with glass ‘gems’ and filigree ornamentation. (The ring’s Museum Collection number is OXCMS: 2004.131. I would like to thank Martin Henig and Diana Wood for their advice and assistance with this paper although all errors are of course my own.). The ring (Figures 1, 2) is permanently displayed at Abingdon County Hall Museum as a condition of assistance with its purchase by the National Art Collection Fund. Following the detailed report provided by Susan Youngs of the British Museum accompanying its designation as a Treasure Trove find, and a short notice by Helena Hamerow in the report of recent archaeological work at Sutton Courtenay, including Susan Youngs’ report and a black-and-white photograph (Hamerow et al 2007), the ring merits fuller discussion. Given the contribution of our honorand to this field, his strong interest in finds of the period and especially personal ornament, his long-standing commitment to the detectorist contribution and the exemplary and generous support always given to archaeologists and curators in this county, the present Festschrift provides a fitting occasion.

four collared settings of degraded bi-chrome glass beads. The beads appear to be spherical, one rotates slightly, and their gold collars are composite, each sheet collar carries a ring of beaded wire and an upper ring of plain wire. The bezel is divided into quadrants by two intersecting lines of beaded wire finished at the rim by four ‘C’ scrolls of beaded wire. The hoop is partly flattened and distorted and shows signs of wear on the line of the filigree. The outer rim of the bezel is also worn and there is a little modern damage. ‘This is an Anglo-Saxon ring and its soldered construction is still in the tradition of the gold pendants and composite brooches of early seventh century grave furnishings, best known from Kentish cemeteries. Quadripartite settings are also seen on these pieces. The assembled construction type and use of several grades of beaded filigree wire are also features of Merovingian rings of this period. While goldsmithing is a conservative skill and filigree work is made in much the same way in many periods, the setting of glass as a precious material and the fairly high quality of the gold are indicative of a period similar to that of the pendants, namely the seventh century. Finger rings are much less well represented in the Anglo-Saxon archaeological record of this period compared to Merovingian finds and this is an interesting survival. The little beads are odd and indicative of a culture where glass was rare, whether imported or recycled.

In 2002 the rare find of an Anglo-Saxon gold finger-ring was stated to have been made in the course of building works at 9 Golafre Road, Abingdon, and later declared Treasure Trove by the Oxford Coroner. The Treasure Trove report by Youngs (27 November 2002, Treasure Trove Reference 2002/T.234) describes and dates the find as follows:

‘Whether the use here of a cruciform decoration is a sign of Christian faith cannot be proven, but given that conversion proceeded from the top of society downwards and that this must have been the property of a person of rank, it may well have been a sign of deliberate adherence to the new faith. The cross here is set square to the hoop, unlike those pendants where the suspension loop lets the ‘cross’ hang on a diagonal.

‘Gold Anglo-Saxon finger ring, bezel w. 15 x 16 mm; hoop w. 4 mm; wt. 5.39g. Ring made in two parts from sheet gold; a plain broad band hoop with a longitudinal row of beaded filigree wire, ending in splayed lozengeshaped terminals soldered behind the bezel. The bezel is a circular disc with a rim of finer beaded wire framing 9

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 1. Gold ring from Abingdon (bezel). Photograph by Diane Holmes

Figure 2. Gold ring from Abingdon (band). Photograph by Diane Holmes 10

Lauren Gilmour: An Anglo-Saxon gold finger ring from Abingdon series of furnished female burials of c 650 – 800, located away from churches, often in or near Pagan cemeteries (Crawford 2003). Those with grave goods, especially those of women, often appear to contain symbolically Christian artefacts, specifically high-status gold and garnet or glass jewellery either as actual crosses, or as pendants with cross motifs in filigree work. Good examples are the circular gold pendants of cruciform design, with central setting of garnet or of glass simulating garnet, and filigree work, from Grave 93, dated to the late 7th century, in the cemetery at Boss Hall, Ipswich, Suffolk (Webster 1991. From nearer the Abingdon region comes the sheet silver cross pendant (for Crawford, a ‘poor relation’ of those from Boss Hall) from female grave 187 at the large Final Phase cemetery at Butler’s Field, Lechlade, Gloucestershire; and perhaps worthier comparisons from the same cemetery, three gold disc pendants with cross motif designs in filigree work and central settings, one in deep blue glass (Inhumation 84), one with five mounted garnets (Inhumation 95), and one with central shell setting, the setting perhaps a replacement (179), all from Final Phase graves(Boyle et al 1998, 92, 98-9, 127, 129-30, 222, 227, 254, 266). The Milton Jewel, a gold and garnet composite brooch illustrated by Akerman in 1855 and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 3), was actually found ‘near Abingdon’ (Akerman 1855 Pl III); and in summer 2009 a large gold and garnet brooch of quadripartite/cruciform design with gold foil and filigree work was discovered in a Conversion Period female grave by a metal detector nearby in East Hanney (personal communication Oxfordshire Museum Service. The find is currently subject to Treasure Trove procedures.)

Abingdon on Thames appears to have been a place of importance throughout the Anglo-Saxon period.’ The reported findspot in Golafre Road lies close to the site of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Saxton Road in south Abingdon, possibly associating the ring with this important cemetery complex although not with an archaeological context. However an anonymous letter subsequently received described the provenance of the ring as Sutton Courtenay, an area several miles south of Abingdon also rich in Anglo-Saxon remains and once again under investigation in 2002. This suggestion would link the ring closely with another important Anglo-Saxon cemetery complex in the same area. In either case this may be an item of precious jewellery originating from a grave near a larger cemetery context. Youngs has assigned the ring to the 7th century on stylistic grounds, finding it ‘in the tradition’ of early 7th-century composite brooches from Kent. With regard to the dating framework for Anglo-Saxon metalwork generally, the issues outlined by Wilson in 1964 remain today (Wilson 1964, 8-10, 17). After the heyday of Pagan accompanied burial in the 5th and 6th centuries with its mostly wellunderstood progression of artefact types and styles, a secure means of dating apart from stylistic and technical study is lacking. Inscriptions bearing the names of historical personages do not occur until the 9th century; coin hoards are absent in the 8th century and coins themselves largely absent in earlier centuries. Apart from the Lindisfarne Gospels of c. 698 and the Leningrad Bede of c. 746 there are no contemporary manuscripts until the mid 9th century. On the other hand some technical details are useful, for example the replacement of gold by silver around 700 as the principal medium of European coinage – coinage had presumably been a chief source of raw material for the jeweller – and the end of the use of the garnets so popular in Pagan Saxon jewellery by about 700, perhaps because of the loss of the source. From about the same time one finds the division of the decorative field into sub-fields and the use of flattish circular blue glass, all characteristics relevant to the Abingdon ring.

Crawford speculates that while the previous (5th to early 7th-century) ‘pre-Christian’ phase of burial ritual in Anglo-Saxon England produced gender-specific burial suites, with female graves demonstrating a wider range of artefacts apparently serving to display wealth at the point of burial (presumably in the absence of a focus on inheritance of artefacts as developed later), in the Final Phase or Conversion period goods generally were less common in burials, with fewer but wealthier female furnished burials, these displaying substantial costume elements including the new Kentish styles. She concludes that these graves relate to a new elite keen to display their social superiority, of which a Christian identity could be part. In 7th and 8th-century England upper-class women may be said to have gained in status, benefiting from society’s increasing wealth but still with the rights of inheritance and ownership of wealth intact, which were shortly to begin to be dismantled.

Imitations of the fine jewellery current in Kent early in the 7th century may have arrived more slowly in the Upper Thames valley and persisted for longer. The date of manufacture of the ring may well fall within the later 7th-century Conversion period of the English settlements to Christianity, better-known to archaeologists as the Final Phase of Pagan Saxon furnished burial, because graves of this character have occurred as ‘final phases’ of cemeteries mostly composed of 5th to early 7th-century graves. Sometimes these graves are outstandingly rich or significant. (In a study published in 1986 Andrew Boddington traced the development of the Final Phase ‘model’, systematically demonstrating the weakness of the model and proposing a better one involving grave goods only in terms of their overall decrease in importance – a useful study but of little assistance here: Boddington 1990, 196-7). Sally Crawford in a recent study identifies a

Crawford regards the artefactual link between the wealthy female Final Phase burials with their distinctive jewellery, and the conversion to Christianity, ‘demonstrable’ by reason of several well-dated burials of historical personages in ecclesiastical contexts, specifically the furnished church burial of St Cuthbert (d. 687) with a number of precious items, and even more relevant the burial c. 680 in the abbey at Chelles, France of a Frankish queen of Saxon origin in 11

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor cross, perhaps an altar-cross (Figure 4), were amongst the hundreds of fragmentary items of male military equipment of precious metals found as a hoard discovered in 2009 in Staffordshire and probably to be dated to 650-700 AD, possibly to be identified as battle loot (from Northumbrian and East Anglian sources) of the Mercian warrior nobility (Leahy and Bland 2009). Clearly in the 7th century the personal possession of precious objects with a Christian connotation was not confined to women (and indeed the Byzantine Christian elements of the Sutton Hoo burial of c AD 625 may also be relevant here: Carver 2005). Crawford identifies some other furnishings from these graves as specifically ‘Christian’ artefacts, for example iron fittings perhaps from beds or couches, remains of satchels and so on. BUT – not a ring. The Abingdon ring despite its close technical and symbolic similarity to late 7th-century pendants from Final Phase graves in the Abingdon area, remains virtually unique for this period as a probable female grave-find in this style. At the present time it appears that the choice of a finger-ring by a woman of this period, as a showy jewel with Christian connotations, was exceptional. To try to set this phenomenon in context it is worth reviewing the occurrence and use of finger-rings historically in Britain up to the time represented by the Abingdon ring. Finger-rings of precious and base metals had been popular in Roman Britain (Henig 1978 passim) and are found in late Roman hoards and post-Roman scrap hoards (Hinton 2005, 10-11). Many had a bezel with a device and many were apparently worn by men; William Filmer-Sankey has looked systematically at rings of prestige materials and suggested percentages for rings of significance and those purely decorative (Filmer-Sankey 1990). There is no evidence that I know of for the use of finger-rings in Roman times as a wedding-ring. (There are betrothal rings, i.e. rings with clasped hands. Romans did not use rings in burials and in Britain there are few Roman burials with important rings in them.) But this has been a common destination for a finger-ring, often a relatively plain one, from Tudor times to the present day, especially for women. Sufficient evidence had been gathered by Tania Dickinson already in 1976 to demonstrate conclusively that apart from some older, Roman finger-rings found mostly in 5th-century graves, nearly all finger-rings from Anglo-Saxon graves in the Upper Thames area were plain or with a very simple form of ornament. Most were of silver, bronze or silvered bronze, most came from female graves, and where the plan of the grave was known or described, and the relevant portions of the skeleton preserved, most had been found on one of the inner digits of the left or occasionally right hand (Dickinson 1976, 198-9 and passim. From the historical rather than archaeological record comes the idea of an earlier Anglo-Saxon ‘lord-ring’ payment presumably also involving objects of very simple style: Hinton 2005, 51, 87).

Figure 3. Brooch found near Abingdon. Akerman 1855, Pl.

III

a funeral tunic embroidered with the representation of a pectoral cross pendant. Worth mentioning in this context is the find of a hanging-bowl carefully hidden probably in the later 7th century in the (Conversion-period) grave of an important male personage in the churchyard of the early stone church at St-Paul-the-Bail, Lincoln (Gilmour 2007). This appears to demonstrate a contemporary, related situation, with a demonstrably Christian man being buried in a church context, nevertheless in a burial furnished with an object of significance. (Contemporary burials in church contexts similarly furnished with hanging bowls have been discussed by Harris and Henig 2010; cf. Yorke 2010) Most recently and astonishingly, specifically Christian items for example a jewelled gold

Thus a discontinuity appears to exist between Roman and Anglo-Saxon finger-rings in Britain in both style and use. But a small number of exceptional finds, including at least 12

Lauren Gilmour: An Anglo-Saxon gold finger ring from Abingdon kings continued to wear rings as in Roman times; these were undoubtedly influential. But perhaps the linked persistence posited by Henig of Christian beliefs and a classical education for certain elite families or groups during so-called Pagan Saxon times (Henig 2004) accounts for the number of finger-rings with Christian motifs found in England in 5th-century contexts, including rings from Wantage and from Abingdon itself (Barton Court Farm). The Christian bishopric at nearby Dorchester-on-Thames derives from a late Roman Christian church on the site with a continuous history. Perhaps the owner of the Abingdon ring belonged to an elite local group recently converted; or perhaps the owner’s Christian connections went back much further than that, accustoming them to the idea of revealing religious identity via a finger-ring.

one from a burial context, show that the ‘Roman’ type of ring usage – a fine or valuable ring probably worn by a male, with a prominent bezel design indicating his role or importance – persisted for a small proportion of people through the Anglo-Saxon period. An outstanding example is the ring from Grave 1, a ship-burial, of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Snape (Filmer-Sankey and Pestell 2001, 8, Pls II, III, 195-6). This is a 6th-century probably Continental gold signet-ring with a Roman onyx gemstone mounted in a Germanic gold setting, whose granulated decorative details could have been models for the filigree-work jewellery decoration of the 7th century described above. Probably of the 7th century is a gold ring from London near Euston Square, with a very worn gold solidus struck in Constantinople for the Emperor Theodosius II (408-50) set into a gold ring with a circular bezel with fine bead and twisted wires – David Hinton suggests it ‘may have belonged to someone wealthy with an interest in the reemerging port or the newly founded St Paul’s Church’ (Hinton 2005, n.xiii, 78 fig 3.2).

To suggest the significance of the ring for Abingdon itself we should review the local situation. The earlier background to Abingdon’s importance throughout the period termed ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (in Henig 2002, especially in Chapter 7 on the metamorphosis of Roman Britain, Martin Henig argues for the mixed Celtic/Germanic inheritance of the Gewissae, the local population: 131-5) may be summarised as follows. There is more or less continuous evidence for a settlement on the site of central Abingdon from the 7th or 6th century BC (see Devaney 2007, 73ff and Brady 2007, 107ff). But it was in the later Roman period with the development of a large-scale pottery industry to the south and east of Oxford that the future pattern was set for Abingdon as a Thames-side staging post for the river trade between Oxford and London. Although Abingdon the place is curiously anonymous (we first hear of a pre7th century name, Sevekesham, in Norman times: Hudson 2007, 4ff) and its identity ambiguous before the arrival of the Middle Saxon abbey when it received the name ‘Abbendun’, everything points to a continuous history for the river port (Blair 2000, 3). Finds from the 5th- and 6thcentury settlement and cemetery sites at Sutton Courtenay (Leeds 1924, 1927 and 1947) and Saxton Road, south Abingdon (Leeds and Harden 1936), respectively, indicate people of some distinction (wealthy women, and a youth buried with a lyre like that from Sutton Hoo - but two centuries earlier: Leeds and Harden 1936). Christianity influenced the area early (for example the Long Wittenham stoop with Christian iconography dating from c 500: Henig 2011, 185-6 fig 7.4) and may already have been present in the late Roman period, to judge from the iconography of a buckle-plate with peacocks and cantharus/chalice found near Wantage (Brown and Henig 2002), and of a ring with peacocks and other creatures from Barton Court Farm in Abingdon itself (Henig 1984 microfiche 5, D13-14, fig 105 no 2). It would appear that it was an economically key trading place and that some wealthy men and women living in the area owned jewellery of above-average quality, and also that there was a detectable Christian element in the population.

Hinton, Filmer-Sankey and others have attributed occurrences in Britain of the ‘Roman’ type of finger-ring form and usage to Frankish influence, as Merovingian

With regard to the 7th century, the period of the ring as established by Youngs based on stylistic considerations, there are historical sources concerned with this period,

4. Cross found near Stafford. Leahy and Bland 2009, 36.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Bibliography

albeit later ones. Now Abingdon becomes eventful. We are told by Bede that in 635 St Birinus baptised King Cynegils of Wessex at Dorchester. In the last quarter of the century, we are told by the 12th-century Abbey chroniclers, the foundation of the Abbey was effected in stages thanks to a wealthy local brother and sister, with a grant of 675, a fragmentary charter of 687, and a move from a hillier area to the north of Abingdon (‘Abbendun’, ‘Abbey on the hill’) to the site of the present town in 699 (Hudson 2007, 4ff).

Akerman, J. Y. 1855. Remains of Pagan Saxondom. London, John Russell Smith. Blair, J. 2000. Later Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 700-1100. Oxoniensia 65, 1-6. Boddington, A. 1990. Models of burial, settlement and worship: the final phase reviewed’, in E. Southworth (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries. A Reappraisal. Proceedings of a Conference held at Liverpool Museum 1986, 177–99. Stroud, Alan Sutton. Boyle, A. Jennings, D. Miles, D. and Palmer, S. 1998, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Butler’s Field, Lechlade, Gloucestershire, 1: Prehistoric and Roman Activity and Anglo-Saxon Grave Catalogue. Thames Valley Landscape Monograph 10. Oxford, Oxford Archaeology Unit. Brady, K., Smith, A. and Laws, G. 2007. Excavations at Abingdon West Central Redevelopment: Iron Age, Roman, Medieval and Post-medieval activity in Abingdon. Oxoniensia 72, 107-202. Brown, C. and Henig, M. 2002. A Romano-British buckle plate from East Challow, near Wantage. Oxoniensia 67, 363–5. Carver. M. 2005. Sutton Hoo. A Seventh-century Princely Burial Ground and its Context. London, British Museum Press. Crawford, S. 2003. Anglo-Saxon women, furnished burial and the Church’, in D. Wood (ed.), Women and Religion in Medieval England, 1–12. Oxford, Oxbow Books. Cox, M. 1989. The Story of Abingdon 1, 150,000,0000 BC1186 AD. Abingdon, Mieneke Cox. Devaney, R. 2007. The excavation of Iron Age, Roman, Medieval and Civil War features south of the Vineyard, Abingdon Oxfordshire. Oxoniensia 72, 73-106. Dickinson, T. M. 1976. The Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites of the Upper Thames Region, and their bearing on the history of Wessex, circa AD 400-700. Unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford Filmer-Sankey, W. 1990. On the function and status of prestige finger-rings in the early medieval Germanic world c 450-700. Unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Oxford. Filmer-Sankey, W. and Pestell, T. 2001. Snape AngloSaxon Cemetery: excavations and surveys 1824-1992. East Anglian Archaeology Report No. 95. Gilmour, B. 2007. Sub-Roman or Saxon, Pagan or .

An intriguing aspect of this new find must be the resemblance of its story to the story of the Black Cross, so well recounted by Cox in the first volume of her history of Abingdon (Cox 1986, 78). Abbey Chronicler A writing c 1229 tells of the Saxon lady Cilla who founded a nunnery at Helenstow (presumably the name of the parish of the Abingdon settlement, with its principal church St Helen’s) c 700. Cilla had acquired a piece of nail purportedly from the true cross which she caused to be incorporated into a jewel or object called the Black Cross, later the Abbey’s most famous relic, and with which she was buried. In about 960 her stone coffin and the relic were discovered by workmen. The Black Cross was taken to the Abbey and kept there until it disappeared in the Dissolution in 1538. A drawing of the Black Cross in MS B fits the MS A text. It shows a Saxon disc-headed pin of the early 8th century, an item used in the headdresses of fashionable ladies (an identification that could not have been made before Victorian times), and which demonstrates the female practice of burial with a Christianised Pagan Saxon jewel. Some parallels between the pin and the ring are perhaps instructive, given the interesting issues of the sex and possible Christian beliefs of the owner that have been raised. Unlike the almost contemporary supposed ‘Black Cross’ (i.e. the pin) there is no certainty that the ring belonged to a woman, although in addition to the evidence adduced above from local and regional Conversion Period furnished burials, the instinctual feeling that the exuberant decoration does not indicate a masculine object, is strengthened by one of Filmer-Sankey’s conclusions in his recent study, that purely decorative finger rings of this period were usually owned by a female. (The Abingdon ring would be classed as a ‘jewellery ring’ under ‘prestige rings’ of ‘non-practical function’. Filmer-Sankey found these to be from female graves only: Filmer-Sankey 1990, abstract. Contrast the 6th-century Snape gold ring discussed by the same author: there are decorative similarities with the Abingdon ring, but the form of this ring would be ‘functional’ and it was found in a male grave: FilmerSankey and Pestell 2001, 8, 120, 195-6.) As a detectorist find, given the lack of an archaeological context there cannot be certainty that the ring has not been redeposited from a prior location. As with the pin/’Black Cross’, there are alternative possibilities. A stylistically Anglo-Saxon object might later have been regarded as, and valued as, a Christian object. Alternatively, as with the Black Cross, a contemporary jewel incorporating a cross element may have been owned by a member of Abingdon’s newly (or already) Christianised aristocracy.

Hamerow, H., Hayden, C. and Hey, G. 2007. Anglo-Saxon and earlier settlement near Drayton Road, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire, Archaeological Journal 164, 109-96. Harris, A. and Henig, M. 2010. Hand-washing and footwashing, sacred and secular, in Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval period, in Henig and Ramsay 2010, 25-38. 14

Lauren Gilmour: An Anglo-Saxon gold finger ring from Abingdon Henig, M. 1978. A Corpus of Engraved Gemstones from British Sites. British archaeological reports 8. Oxford. Henig, M. 1984. [title of work], in Miles, David (ed.), Archaeology at Barton Court Farm, Abingdon, Oxon. Oxford Archaeological Unit Report 3. Council for British Archaeology Research Report 50. London. Henig, M. 2002. The Heirs of King Verica. Culture and Politics in Roman Britain. Stroud, Tempus. Henig, M. 2004. Remaining Roman in Britain AD 300.

Henig, M. 2011. Early Christian Iconography in Eastern Britain, in A Festschrift for David Howlett, AngloSaxon 3, forthcoming. Henig, M. forthcoming. Review of Howlett, ‘Early Christian Iconography in Eastern Britain’, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association (forthcoming). M. Henig and N. Ramsay (eds), Intersections: the . Hinton, D. A. 1974. A Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700-1100 in the Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Hinton, D. A. 2005. Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins, Possessions and People in Medieval Britain. Oxford, University Press. Hudson , J. (ed.) 2007. Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis. The History of the Church of Abingdon 1. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Leahy, K. and Bland, R. 2009. The Staffordshire Hoard. London, British Museum Press. Leeds, E. T. 1924. A Saxon village near Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire. Archaeologia 73, 147-92 Leeds, E. T. 1927. A Saxon village at Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire: second report. Archaeologia 76, 59-80. Leeds, E. T. 1947. A Saxon village at Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire: third report. Archaeologia 92, 79-93. Leeds, E. T. and Harden, D. B. 1936. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Abingdon, Berkshire. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Webster, L. 1991. The new learning: metalwork, bone, wood and sculpture, in L. Webster and J. Backhouse (eds), The Making of England. Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900. London, British Museum Press. Wilson , D. M. 1964. Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700-1100 in the British Museum. London, British Museum. Yorke, B. 2010. The Oliver’s Battery hanging-bowl burial from Winchester, and its place in the early history of Wessex, in Henig and Ramsay 2010, 77-86.

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Wonder after modernity: 16th century visual sources, 20th century ethnographic collections and ‘transition’ Assimina Kaniari Abstract Transition from early modern wonder into modernity, in the context of the history of ideas, has often been cast in terms of notions of discontinuity and closure, as opposed to those of survival and continuity. The foundations of modern domains of inquiry as separate disciplines in the 19th century has often acted as the privileged point in time and historical narration out of which histories of ideas depart in approaching the explanation of irrational, from the standpoint of our current thought style, notions and their material embodiments – visual depictions and material collections – of objects, such as the ones associated with the idea of natural wonder in 16th century thought and natural philosophy. The notion of the thunderbolt is such a variety of 16th century natural wonder. Often depicted in 16th century visual sources and treatises as comprising irreducibly artificial form, which is recognizable from our current perspective as identical to the form of an archaeological object and the object of a prehistoric stone tool, the 16th century notion of the thunderbolt explained the origin and nature of such objects by recourse to extraordinary forces in action in nature. Ceraunia and glossopetra were collected and can be traced back in cabinets of curiosities but were also depicted as extraordinary objects comprising the status of natural wonders in 16th century natural philosophy treatises. Keywords Natural wonders, 16th century natural philosophy treatises, illustration, ceraunia, glossopetra, Cabinets of curiosity, printed catalogues, formed stones, the transition across the modern and pre-modern divide, 20th century ethnographic collections, art

From the standpoint of the history of ideas in particular, the early modern notions of the ceraunia and glossopetra, appear as irrational to us. Early modern wonder by extension appears to express an object that is understood in the context of our current system of thought and disciplinary order as incommensurable with contemporary and modern explanations. The transition from early modern wonder to modernity describes, in the context of this narrative and focus, a break and a rupture. This rupture becomes more of a transformation however if one chooses to examine this transition not only against the methodological lens of the history of ideas but also by taking into consideration the evidence that the history of collecting, and ethnographic evidence comprising the evidence of 20th century collections, present to us.

of ideas itself enriching this discipline with a novel and useful variety of evidence; the evidence of the collection. While the evidence of illustrations from treatises and descriptions from printed catalogues of collections from the 16th century describe ceraunia as objects of a celestial origin similar to that of meteorites, the same belief, as the Bellucci collection of amulets makes clear, survives in 20th century ethnographic contexts and in the material evidence of 20th century ethnographic collections. Bellucci’s (1844 – 1921) collection emerges in conditions of modernity and was formed at a time when collections of prehistoric stone tools recognised as archaeological artefacts, and the facts of prehistory were in place among museum and private collections of archaeologists and anthropologists alike with whom Bellucci also communicated. Rather than suggesting an underlying continuity across early modern wonder, and by extension 16th century natural philosophy, and modern ethnography based on the similarity in the notions archived and examined via the evidence of the collection, I would like to use this evidence instead to underline the importance and usefulness of the history of collecting as a method and a means of revisiting the early historiography of the history of ideas with special relevance to the historiographic treatment of early modern wonder in modernity.

Contemporary contexts associated with the foundations of ethnography in the 19th century, and specific examples of 20th century ethnographic collections, such as the case of the Bellucci collection of amulets at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, pose questions and offer answers both of a historical as well as historiographic nature. The understanding of transition across the modern and pre-modern divide against the evidence that the history of collecting offers to us changes considerably, I would like to argue, both the picture brought to us by earlier scholarship in the history of ideas on the question of the modern, if any, fate of wonder, as well as the object of the history of ideas itself.

This argument and nature of approach is particularly appropriate for this volume dedicated to Arthur MacGregor, I would like to suggest, given the pioneering role that his scholarship has played in shaping both what is accepted today as a separate discipline, the discipline of the history of collecting, as well as the particular kind of nature that historical knowledge in the context of this endeavour adopts; in particular a synthesis between the demands

Drawing on the Bellucci collection, I would like to argue in this paper that evidence from the history of collecting both revises our understanding of the historical phenomenon described as transition from a rupture into a transformation, but most significantly also changes the object of the history 17

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor of materiality, via an emphasis on the ideas and material evidence of the collection and taxonomy, and the scholarly breadth of the history of ideas. In MacGregor’s rich and erudite writings, collections and collectors, taxonomy and illustration are revived as historical evidence important in their own right, but also as locations, social, visual and material, of ideas in transition; mechanisms for the narration of stories that amount to histories of ideas seen through the lens of the collection.

of enriching and revisiting earlier narratives used in the historiography of the early modern period to discuss transition in the history of ideas against novel categories of evidence and against material forms of testimony such as the one afforded by 20th century ethnographic collections. They also comprise an exercise in what Martin Kemp has termed the New History of the Visual in bringing together categories of visual artefacts thought earlier to be unrelated. Such is the example of 16th century illustrations of natural wonders as expressions of 16th century ‘irrational’ beliefs if compared to ethnographic objects of the 20th century, such as the beautiful silver mounted amulets on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum forming the Bellucci collection. Both of these may be brought together in one narration, at the same time an experiment in historical method concerned with the synthesis between the history of ideas, the history of collecting and the history of art.

In this paper I will attempt to trace continuity and discontinuity in systems of thought, as the latter become embodied in the organisation of disciplines across the modern and pre-modern divide, by looking at the transformation, but also resistance, of collections consisting of archaeological objects, before and after the foundations of modern archaeology, considering the collection as a historical – conceptual entanglement. The display and depiction of forms, legible in our eyes as belonging to the forms of prehistoric stone tools, in the context of the early modern period but also in the 19th century, that is in the contingencies that describe the period before and after the foundations of archaeology as a discipline and a system of thought, emerges across the modern and pre-modern divide as a set of diverse and distinct one to other responses that apply nevertheless to the same persistent question.

Introduction: ethnographic collections historiography of early modern wonder

and

the

Following the foundations of prehistoric archaeology in the 19th century, stone tools have been increasingly thought to act in an almost ‘natural’ light as sites of archaeological explanation and inference. The facts of prehistoric stone tools as a variety of material evidence attesting to the existence and behaviour of early peoples in remote times was still an object of controversy until the second half of the 19th century. Palaeoliths (a term John Lubbock [18341913] coined in the 19th century) or the ‘rude implements from the drift’, the term originally used by John Evans (1823-1908) and his fellow geologist-friends involved in the human antiquity controversy, did express both men argued, a novel category of archaeological fact as well as a new category of artefact that based its claims to its artificial character on a new set of arguments that expressed in a communicably consensual manner ‘evidence of art’. Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) and Joseph Prestwich (18121896) were also part of the small group of geologists with whom John Evans, antiquary as well as geologist, collaborated during his systematic effort to defend a ‘remote antiquity of man’ through the evidence of the rude artificial objects, the palaeoliths.

The latter comprises the origin and nature of the formed stones and is resolved in different ways and in the context of our current perspective, disciplinary domains as well. If early modern sources discuss, depict and display formed stones resembling the form of archaeological objects as natural formations, the same question of the origin and nature of the objects’ forms replicates itself in modernity and archaeological controversy that ranges from 18th century antiquaries’ discourses on the nature of the celt and 19th century archaeologists’ and geologists’ controversies over the origin and artificial character of the rude implements from the drift, the palaeoliths. While drawing on the same question, the artificial character of the objects in question, 18th century antiquaries and 19th century archaeologists and geologists offer arguments that contrast with the early modern explanation on the origin and nature of this category of formed stones. Not ‘natural’ agencies, but the evidence of ‘art’ instead comprises the answer that men of science privilege in controverting the origin and nature of formed stones resembling the shape of prehistoric stone tools in modernity after the early modern period. Such evidence not only become conceptualized in different ways in archaeological and antiquarian discourse but lead, in turn, to different visual solutions to the depiction of the same forms, or forms comprising the same type of artefact from our current perspective; archaeological evidence.

This debate in many ways built on a pre-existing debate, concerned with the existence of man in the ‘ordinary’, as Prestwich and Evans called it in 1859, period of the Stone Age. The polished ‘celts’, stone implements with clear marks of man’s skill on them, comprised the ‘facts’ available to antiquaries before the geological dimension was added to the archaeological debate on the remote antiquity of man in 1859. Despite many significant differences between the two debates, the antiquarian one on the origin of the ‘celt’ and the 1859 geological and archaeological controversy on the ‘rude implements in the drift’, there is a shared trajectory of thinking underlying Prestwich’s and Evans’s discussions on archaeological evidence in 1859 and antiquarian debate that goes back to the 18th century.

The study of the transitions in the depiction of formed stones resembling the shape of stone tools in the premodern and modern divide not only illustrate the uses of collections and collecting as historical evidence as ways 18

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity

Figure 1. Thunderbolts kept as amulets from the Bellucci collection: flint tools mounted in silver. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

Both discourses controverted the artificial origin of the objects by alluding to the evidence of ‘art’ apparent in the form and evidence of skill present in the form in the case of the celt and in the evidence of design in the case of rude implements of the 19th century archaeological debate. The early modern explanation of the objects’ form in relation to natural agencies becomes eclipsed in the modern attention and explanation of artfulness as a new site for epistemological as well as visual scrutiny of the objects’ form. Despite the conclusion one could draw about the eclipse of the irrational and the eclipse of arguments and notions that in the context of the 16th century appeared under the category of natural wonders, in the modern period, reading this transition against the evidence of 20th century ethnographic collections might present us with a more complex story and understanding of transition across the pre-modern and modern divide. 20th century ethnographic collections and the idea of folklore are two contexts, I would like to argue, that offer a novel way of rethinking the historiography of breaks and discontinuity so far as the modern fate of early modern wonder is concerned against the material testimony and resistance of the collection and collecting practices as historical evidence that are at one and the same time of an ethnographic nature. In the case of the Bellucci collection of prehistoric implements utilized as amulets, still on display today at the Pitt Rivers Museum (Figure 1), early modern irrational ideas resist historiographic narratives of discontinuity via the material presence and evidence of the collection that represents not examples of early wonder

but modern, in the context of our own disciplinary terms, ethnographic facts. While similar to objects collected and depicted as natural wonders in the context of the 16th century, the objects in the context of this collection draw their meaning from their associations to modern ethnography. The thunderbolts that interested Bellucci and gave rise to the formation of the collection, in the context of the Pitt Rivers display, are represented as embodiments of irrational, if compared against the dominant cultural system of thought, beliefs, that are understood, at one and the same time, as expressions of our modern ethnographic understanding of facts. Most of the objects forming the collection were thought to be thunderbolts – objects that had fallen from the sky – and were therefore kept as objects of extraordinary origin and hence as carriers of protective powers referencing the same notion that appeared under the category of the natural wonder in the 16th century. It is early 20th century ethnography, as opposed to a 16th century world view of nature or indeed its order, nevertheless the context that legitimises the collection and explains Bellucci’s collecting strategies, as well as the context of its public display among the Pitt Rivers Museum collections. In this light, late 19th century and early twentieth century ethnography, and the material testimony of the collection as evidence provided by the history of collecting, form a material as well as epistemological context where continuity and rupture respectively might be seen to co-exist in the same 19

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor narration about the modern and pre-modern divide. The study of 20th century ethnographic collections and the Bellucci collection of prehistoric implements as amulets in this context is an argument for the uses of ethnographic evidence to the study of history.

consistently throughout the study of various collections. This paper is a tribute to MacGregor’s concept of visual evidence and attention to the ‘misbehaviour’ of coherent wholes of specimens, collections, seen in their systems of ordering, that emerges against the pre-modern and modern divide.

Rather than suggesting a linear progression from the early modern to now, the evidence of the Bellucci collection support a broader methodological argument about the significance of the collection as a material apparatus for history looking at ways in which linear historiographies and the historiography of rupture may be overcome, or corrected, or even re-rewritten not as break, nor even as continuity but as transformation instead. The collecting and collected legacies of ceraunia in the 19th and 20th century and against the disciplinary domain of ethnography attest to the transformation rather than dissolution of rejected notions of knowledge, or to a historiographic revision as to the place of such knowledge against the canon of 16th century science and its peripheries in popular belief as well as in modernity. The study of the pre-modern and modern divide can be seen, in this light, as a series of phenomena contingent on the material lives and resistance of collections and objects themselves.

Concentrating on the history of ideas as systems of order, I will first review the early modern history of collections that include archaeological stone tools and their representations before archaeology, mapping the available sources and historical evidence. Then I will look at how the solution to the controversy over the origin of archaeological specimens before the foundations of archaeology, the essence for their definition as early modern wonders, in the example of the thunderbolt, is reversed in modern times. The evidence of art, as opposed to natural agencies, is the argument crucial to the transformation of the thunderbolt to the idea of formed stones in the shape of implements as ‘archaeological’ objects. The explanation of formed stones in the shape of stone tools as expressions and embodiments of ‘art’ which emerges from the 18th century onwards contrasts with the explanations offered in the context of the early modern period and the notions of ceraunia and glossopetra that privileged nature as opposed to art as the key agency that gave rise to these objects. Given the shared, across the modern and pre-modern divide, question of the objects’ true origin, the histories of early modern wonders and modern archaeology in the event and object of the thunderbolt might be seen to have a shared incident and point in narration. Disentangling early modern wonder from its material counterpart, the material object that forms the host for the notion of the thunderbolt, on the other hand, has been the object of 19th and 20th century folklore and ethnology.

All these ideas of course have been put to a test in the writings on the history of collecting that Arthur MacGregor pioneered. Collections and taxonomic styles for MacGregor are historically contingent entities and at the same time evidence of periodizing in a style of history that brings collecting to the broader picture, concerned with the history of ideas and transformations in systems of knowledge. In this light MacGregor’s work has considered very closely the differences in styles of collective thought that mark the display and depiction of ‘archaeological’ objects before archaeology and in the context of the early modern period and after the foundations of modern archaeology, considering as well nuances of this process in the context of the in between space of early antiquarianism.

Ceraunia, taxonomy and intellectual history: an archaeology of early modern wonder against the evidence of the image and the collection

MacGregor has looked at, for example, the irrational life circle of archaeological artefacts in the context of early belief systems recorded by 18th century antiquaries but also their placement in early modern collections as objects of curiosity and wonder. The history of collections in MacGregor’s work not only animates the lives of material things but impinges on the history of ideas that extends from the 17th century until the present as a phenomenon conditioned by the resistance of material objects as historically coherent entities, a connection allowed by his careful scrutiny of taxonomic styles and tropes, concepts of order and their technologies of visibility.

‘Formed stones’ in the shape of stone tools had long been the object of controversy as to their natural or artificial origin and the controversy over their true nature extended back in time before the foundations of modern archaeology or even the modern period itself. The encounter with flint objects resembling the forms of axes, hammers, or arrow heads had been one of the objects associated with much controversy dating back to the middle ages and covering sources as diverse as lapidaries to 16th century natural philosophy treatises. Even though the solutions to the question offered by each debate and period might seem completely unrelated to our current ‘archaeological’ interpretation of such objects, the question central to the controversy as it becomes manifest in these diverse sources is consistently that of origin – how these objects came to be and which were the agencies responsible for their current form – and, as far as 16th century ideas are concerned, matter. One of most frequently quoted explanations was associated with the

If the history of collecting in MacGregor’s work tells the story of changes in ideas about things and about approaches towards things that express, in turn, broader changes in divisions of knowledge that have taken place since the early period, it is the reconstruction of taxonomic styles as historically situated visual evidence that comprises a major methodological problem that his work sets to answer 20

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity name of ‘ceraunia’, which described a ‘natural’ formation very much like a meteorological phenomenon.

Two hundred years later Albertus Magnus (1193/12061280) discussed again the formation of fossils in terms of a virtus formativa. He maintained, for example, that the remains of plants and animals in the earth may be turned to stone in places where agencies of petrifaction are at work. In his medieval treatise, Book of Minerals Albert cites Avicenna (Wyckoff 1967):

The grouping of such objects, in turn, resembled and indeed overlapped with the contemporary category of the mineral. As Grayson notes (1983, 5) for example, ‘descriptions of stone tools, often under the name ceraunia, where routinely inserted into discussions of minerals’ and artefacts were placed next to such items as ‘agate…and potter’s clay.’ The explanation of ceraunia competed, he writes, with that of stones having ‘grown in ground’. Whether the objects were thought to have ‘grown in the ground or fallen from the sky, just as meteorites were known to do’, their classification in the 16th century can be seen nevertheless to be compatible with the 16th century notion of the fossil, literally understood to be a thing dug up. Despite the fact that the placement of stone tools among 16th century collections of minerals might seem puzzling today, an understanding of the predominant ‘scientific’ ideas of the time makes this classification system almost logical.

And Avicenna says that the causes of this is that animals, just as they are, are sometimes changed into stones, and especially stones. For he says that just as Earth and Water are material for stones, so animals, too are materials for stones. And in places where a petrifying force is exhaling, they change into their elements and are attacked by the properties of the qualities [hot, cold, moist, dry] which are present in those places, and the elements in the bodies of such animals are changed into the dominant element, namely Earth mixed with water; and then the mineralizing power converts [the mixture] into stone, and the parts of the body retain their shape, inside and outside just as they were before.

Matter and form were the principle categories used to classify objects in collections. Thus the ‘stoniness’ of fossils but also their form qualified quite naturally as a factor crucial for their grouping in categories, such as that of the ‘natural’ mineral which we use today for a completely different set of objects. The word ceraunia at the same time appears to predate the 16th century.

The Book of Minerals provides also an explanation of ceraunia, perhaps one of the earliest recorded ones, that resembles the explanations that become common in the 16th century and condition both the depiction and classification of such objects. Not only prehistoric stone implements but also bright pebbles or crystals, fossils, and especially sharks’ teeth, or belemnites, form part of what Albertus defines as ‘ceraunia’ (Wyckoff 1967) and the explanation he provides for this grouping references the idea of form rather than matter, as well as the idea of similitude among all these forms to the shape of arrowlike objects. In Tractate ii of the book, while discussing ‘Precious stones and their powers’, Albertus discusses the case of the ‘ceraurum’ and replicates the idea of meteorological phenomena as responsible for the origin of this class of objects. ‘Ceraurum,’ he writes (Wyckoff 1967, 79),

The word goes back to Pliny (Wyckoff 1967, 79), who employed ‘ceraunius’, or ‘ceraunia’ for ‘Keraunos’, the Greek word for thunderbolt. However it seems more probable that the association with this particular class of objects emerged in the period from the Middle Ages onwards rather than having an intrinsically ancient origin. According to Adams, for example (Adams 1938), ‘no mention is made of these objects falling from heaven before the time of Avicenna’. Avicenna (980-1037), the Arabian translator and commentator of Aristotle, reformulated Aristotle’s theory of the self-generation of living organisms, into an explanation of the formation of fossils. Avicenna defined the generative power by means of which fossils came into being as the creative force (vis plastica) of nature lying in the earth. In De Congelatione he described the nature of the petrifying power as an exhalation which when released from the earth could transform everything, including animals and plants into stone. The transformation regarded only matter and the form could be preserved (Wyckoff 1967, 52):

…is said to be like rock crystal, tinged with a sky blue colour. It is said to fall sometimes from a cloud with the thunder, and it is found in Germany and Spain; but the Spanish kind glows like fire. It induces sweet sleep, they say; and it is also said to be effective for winning battles and causes, and [to protect] against the danger of thunder. According to Albert, ‘ceraunia’ are formed within the thundercloud by means of a natural process. In Meteorologica 3.3 Albert notes (Wyckoff 1967, 79): When this earthly dry smoke has been set afire in the viscous moisture in the cloud it is baked into a stone, black or red in colour, that falls from the cloud and splits beams and penetrates walls, and is called by the common people a ‘thunder-axe’. It is a stone, thin and sharp on one side, because the vapour was first directed towards the side while it was being baked.

In the same way also certain plants and animals are turned into stone by a certain mineralizing, petrifying power; and this happens in stony places, or they are suddenly disintegrated by a certain power that issues from the earth at the time of an earthquake and converts to stone whatever it encounters at that time. And this transmutation of the bodies of animals and plants is just as short a step as the transmutation of waters. 21

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Much later, Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) repeats a description and explanation of the ceraurum that presents a striking resemblance to the formulation that Albert puts forward in the Book of Minerals (Daniel and Renfrew 1988, 29):

explain by analogy what it is’, Albert writes. (Wyckoff 1967, 22). Ceraunia in the form of hammers or axes, in turn, were known in Germany in the 16th century under the terms ‘Donnerkeil’, ‘Donneraxt’ (thunder axe), ‘Stralhammer’, ‘Stralkeil’, ‘Stralpfil’ (Adams 1938, 120). Adams describes the form of such ceraunia as an elongated oval, pyramidal in shape, or resembling small hammers or axes (Adams 1938, 120). However it is Conrad Gessner (1516-1565) in his De rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum maxime figuris et similitudinibus Liber (1565, 62) who gives us the earliest account of ceraunia (Geike 1905, 45; Rudwick 1972; Adams 1938, 121) accompanied by illustrative plates (Figure 2) that include among them the ‘Donneraxt’ which fell at Toraw, from the collection of his friend Johannes Kentmann (1518 – 1574) (Adams, 1954, 121) (Figure 3).

When this earthy dry smoke has been set afire in the viscous moisture in the cloud, it is baked into a stone, black or red in colour that falls from the cloud and splits beams and penetrate walls, and is called by the common people as ‘thunder axe’. It is a stone that is thin and sharp on one side, because the vapour was first directed towards that side while it was being baked. Like Albert, Aldrovandi explains the ‘natural’ process responsible for the origin of these objects by recourse to analogy (Daniel and Renfrew 1988, 29): ‘due to an admixture of a certain exhalation of thunder and lighting with metallic matter, chiefly in dark clouds, which is coagulated by the circumfused moisture and conglutinated into mass (like flour with water) and subsequently indurated by heat, like a brick.’ Analogy as Albertus Magnus suggests himself however seems to have no literary meaning in this context and comprises a means of visualization that is used in the absence of names and definitions for ‘this power’. ‘Now drawing the correct conclusion from all this, we say that in very truth the productive cause is a mineralizing power which is active in forming stones and because we have no special name for this power, we are obliged to

Kentmann in his Nomenclaturae Rerum Fossilium (1565, 30) describes three ‘Donerkeils’ and a ‘Doneraxt’ which ‘form part of his collection of fossils’ (Adams 1938, 121). Albinus in Meissnische Bergchronica (1590, 153; Adams 1938, 121) mentions certain others which fell in Saxony, including the particular description of one that was ‘driven through a windmill at Toraw’. He describes it as a ‘bluish black Donneraxt, shaped like a hammer, five fingers long and almost three wide and pierced with a round hole’ (Adams, 1954, 121).

Figure 3. Stone axe fallen from the sky from Gesner 1565.

Figure 2. Images of ceraunia from Gesner 1565.

22

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity Not all 16th century authors reproduced the explanation of the ceraunia or indeed use them in their classification systems. Thus Georg Agricola (1494-1555), author of a number of technical treatises and pronounced the father of mineralogy refuted this explanation attributing it to Avicenna. As Emmanuel König (1658-1731) notes in his Regnum Minerale, in De Ortu Subterraneorum, book V (1703, 244; Adams, 1954, 123), Agricola refutes the explanation of the ceraunia suggesting instead a more ordinary natural cause as responsible for the formation of such objects:

that he makes by his art; so in material suitable for stones there is a power that forms and produces stones, and develops the form of this stone or that. Like formed stones in the shape of prehistoric stone tools, urns, could equally fit the 16th century understanding of the term fossil, meaning a thing literally ‘dug up’ (res fossiles). If things dug up from the earth qualified as fossils, matter and form comprised the two common classificatory categories used for the grouping of such objects in collections. As a consequence, like Albert’s classification of a number of stony objects together as ceraunia on account of their similitude in form to the shape of flint arrows heads, resemblance in form, or the ‘stoniness’ of the fossils, were the criteria applied for the classification of diverse things together. In this light, a wide range of ‘petrified objects’ appeared among 16th century collections of fossils including objects as diverse from our understanding as archaeological flint tools to fossilised shark teeth and sea urchins along with a number of figured yet ordinary stones.

Many people deny that Ceraunii are generated in the clouds but say that they come into existence on the earth where lightning strikes and are made of the aggregation of sand grains, as stones are. Among these is Agricola (De Ortu Subterraneorum, book V) where he ridicules the credulity of Avicenna in writing that in Persia there fall from the heavens with bright flashes of light, brazen bodies resembling barbed arrows which will not melt in a furnace. Despite the early manifestations of such modern insights the issue took a very long time to be resolved. Of particular importance is Michelle Mercati’s (1541-93) Metalloteca published in 1719, almost two hundred years after Mercati’s death. In that he discusses the origin of thunderbolt (flint) and the controversy on their natural or artificial origin. In becomes clear from that, that the controversy on the origin of fossils was still in progress even during the 18th century in which the work was eventually published (Schnapp 1996, 347):

16th century cabinets of curiosities displayed such ‘fossils’ as natural wonders merging objects such as petrified birds’ nests with thunderbolts (ceraunia) (MacGregor 1985, 2938). Archaeological pots dug up from the earth were also depicted and at times displayed in cabinets of curiosities among other ‘fossils’ as natural wonders. The question of origin and their extraordinary, natural rather than artificial origin, made them qualify as curiosities here as well as in the case of the ceraunia. The idea of urns growing like plants from the earth, for example, is recorded and illustrated by Münster. As Schnapp has noted (1996, 145), Sebastian Münster (1488- 1552) in Cosmographia Universalis (1544) reproduces such views recounting incidents of pots ‘born spontaneously in the soil’. Such objects were collected as curiosities, Schnapp comments, and still survive in museums in Frankfurt and Hamburg (1996, 145). Schnapp (1996, 146-7; Sklenar 1983, 34) recounts as well the interpretation of Johannes Malthesius (1504 – 1565) who in 1562 wrote:

The ‘ceraunite’ is common in Italy; it is often called an ‘arrow’ and is modelled from thin hard flint into a triangular point. Opinion is divided on the subject. Many believe that they are cast down by lighting; yet those who study history judge that before the use of iron they were struck from very hard flint for the folly of war. In addition to meteorology inspired phenomena, another explanation often cited in the 16th century to account for the origin of formed stones in the shape of prehistoric implements was that of spontaneous generation. In the Book of Minerals and the fifth chapter of the book entitled ‘The efficient cause of the stones’, Albert had already adopted an explanation for the origin of fossils and minerals that described an equally spontaneous and biological mechanism. Minerals and fossils had ‘grown’ from ‘seeds’ in the earth, he asserts in his treatise. This petrific seed, in turn, is responsible for the formation of fossils. The seed pre-exists in the mineral, Albert notes (Wyckoff 1967, 52):

It is indeed remarkable that these vessels are so varied in shape and that no one is like the other, and that in the earth they are soft as coral in water, hardening only in air…It is said that there was once a grave on the spot, with the ashes of the dead, as in an ancient urn… But since the vessels are only dug up in May, when they reveal their position by forming mounds as though the earth were pregnant (which guides those who seek them), I consider them to be natural growths, not manufactured, but created by God and Nature. Already by 1485, manuscript and incunabula published in Barthélemy de Glanville’s Le livre des propriétés des choses, reproduced this notion and depicted vases rising from the earth like plants (1996, 144). Not only encounters with subterranean urns in unexpected burial contexts formed the object of speculation and curiosity but

Let us say, then, that just as in an animal’s seed, which is a residue for its food, there comes from the seminal vessels a force capable of forming an animal, which [actually] forms and produces an animal, and is in the seed in the same way that an artisan is in the artefact 23

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor encounters with fossils and shells on the top of mountains had also attracted an equally considerable amount of speculation well into the 16th century. This idea and explanation for the origin of urns in burial contexts that appeared uncanny to 16th century man was not accepted by all 16th century writers however. In De Natura Fossilium (1546), for example, Agricola opposes the spontaneous generation of vases from the earth, pronouncing the latter a ‘vulgar’ opinion.

in the writings of 16th century figures such as Girolamo Francastoro (1478-1553), Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) and Bernard Palissy (c. 1510-c. 1589) as well as in Michele Mercati’s writings, published however 200 years after his death (Kemp, 1999; Rudwick, 1972; Thorndike 1941, 25). Francastoro’s interpretation of fossils as organic remains and his attribution of their emplacement to the ever changing positions of land and sea, avoided both the miraculous overtones of the vulgar belief in a universal flood and the occult implications of the Neoplatonic explanation: the fossils were thus explicable in terms of natural law. (Kemp 1999; Rudwick 1972; Thorndike 1941, 25). Leonardo, for example, recognized the similarities between the fossils and living molluscs which were so precise that a causal explanation was almost inescapable. (Kemp 1999; Rudwick 1972; Thorndike 1941, 25). Cardano (1501-1576), on the other hand, repeated arguments similar to Leonardo’s and clearly believed that some fossil shells betrayed changes in the position of land and sea. (Rudwick 1972, 41). Palissy also rejected the notion of the universal Flood and asserted the organic explanation of fossils. (Kemp 1999; Rudwick 1972).

The ignorant masses of Saxony and Lower Lusatia believe that these flasks were generated spontaneously within the earth; the Thuringians believe that they were used by monkeys which formerly inhabited the caves of Seeberg. On careful consideration, they are urns in which the ancient Germans, not yet converted to Christianity, preserved the ashes of the burnt corpses. The reasons he quotes to denounce it on the other hand, resemble his ‘geological’ explanation for the formation of the ore deposits on account of his theory of the lapidifying juice. Fossil mussels, belemnites, ‘ammon’s horns’, ‘glosopetra’ (fish teeth), and other ‘problematic’ objects in the context of 16th century interpretations of ‘fossils’ were interpreted as ‘solidified accumulations from water’ (Zittel 1962, 15-16), similar to limestone (Rudwick, 1972).

Explanations of fossils and archaeological artefacts as fossils in the 16th century generated controversy. This not only concerned those authors and collectors who believed such objects to be the result of natural processes as medieval authors had maintained and others who opposed these views, but no consensus seems to have existed as to the categories of objects and processes the term ceraunia could include among 16th century and 17th century authors. Thus, even though ‘glossopetra’ were mentioned by Pliny (Adams 1938, 113) and described as resembling a ‘man’s tongue’, Cardano included glossopetra as a type of ceraunia, ‘Id est fulmen ipsum’, (Adams 1938, 113) while Aldrovandi in Musaeum Metallicum (1648, 601; Adams 1938, 114) explained their origin as ‘sui generis’ having grown from the earth.

A system of causes, heat and cold and the succus lapidescens was responsible for the transformation of the mineral matter, or earthy material into stone. The ‘succus lapidescens’ was the explanation for the origin of fossil leaves and the transformation of wood, bones and fish into ‘inorganic’ matter. In this light Agricola’s natural causes were very different from the ones adopted by medieval authors earlier in the context of the ‘Aristotelian’ yet extraordinary generative forces. In his own words from De Ortu, juices (succus) were ‘not anything but water, which on the other hand has absorbed earth’ (Agricola 1556, 48), ‘distinguished from water by their density (crasitudo)’ (Agricola 1556, 9). It is the lapidifying juice, the natural cause that acts as the key explanation in Agricola’s discussion of the origin of ore deposits and fossils and the application of the doctrine of spontaneous generation on the flasks discovered in Saxony is the result of ignorance, he writes, producing his alternative explanation derived ‘on careful consideration’.

Like Cardano, Gregor Reisch (1467-1525) in Margarita Philosophica (Figure 4), depicts a man being killed by a ‘glossopetra’ during a storm, where a larger stone, a ceraunia is splitting open a tree (Adams 1938, 119). Thunderbolts also appeared in collections under the categories and names of brontia and ombria, corresponding in reality to fossil echinoidea (MacGregor and Impey 1985, 204–213) or sea urchins (Adams 1938, 118), which were also described by Pliny as shaped in manner of a tortoise head and ‘falleth with a crack of thunder (as it is thought) from heaven.’ (Adams 1938, 118).

Even though his definition of the fossil and explanation of the origin of the urns contrasted to the 16th century received opinion, the conception of fossils as monuments and evidence of the historical past of the earth, valuable in the sense perhaps of other material historical evidence such as coins and manuscripts, according to Zittel, is credited in the history of geology as the achievement of Robert Hooke (1635-1703). Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) and Lectures and Discourses on Earthquakes (1668), she writes, demonstrate that ‘it was he who for the first time understood fossils as markers of time past’ (Zittel 1962, 19). Nevertheless similar conceptions appear much earlier

Robert Plot (1640-1696), in his Natural History of Oxfordshire, (Plot 1705, 91; Adams 1938, 118) recounts these two categories of thunderbolts connected with the names of Brontiae and Ombriae, pronouncing such views nevertheless as vulgar opinions: I descent next to such [stones] as (by the vulgar at least are thought to be sent to us from the inferior Heaven), 24

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity

Figure 4. Images of glossopetra and ceraunia from Reisch, Margarita Philosophica.

to be generated in the clouds and discharged thence in time of Thunder and violent showers: for which very reason and no other that we know of, the ancient Naturalists coined them suitable names, and called such as they were pleased to think feel in Thunder, Brontiae, and those which fell in Showers, by the name of Ombriae.

is also known to have discussed ceraunia pondering on the question of their true nature without however having explicitly acknowledged their artificial origin (Balfour, 1929a, 42): Si silex ullo modo foret tractabilis, potius Arte quam Naturá elaboratum esse hoc corpus hugares…. de quibus dubito Artisne aut Naturae sint opera. Ad ceraunias sunt qui veterum gladiolos fuisse arbitrentur.

As Henry Balfour (1863-1939) notes (1929a, 41), several objects which were described as ‘thunderbolts’ (forlgori, or pietre di fulmine) were part of the collections of the Vatican during the second half of the 16th century. Among collectors of the 17th century, Olaus Wormius (1588-1655)

Beyond the recorded descriptions of the objects in various printed sources, mostly catalogues of collections and cabinets of curiosities of the 16th century and later periods as discussed above, very little survives today in terms of actual objects in the original context of display. 25

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor The Oxford University Museum of Natural History preserves a surviving specimen of Lhwyd’s (c.1660-1709) Glossopetra maxima, which formed part of the mineral collection of the Ashmolean Museum in 1710.

about the material world. The modern recognition of forms in the shape of stone tools as works of the human hand and archaeological objects marked, in turn, a reversal in the nature of explanation offered in the pre-modern context so far as the origin of such objects was concerned. It was no longer nature, but agencies attributed to man that offered contexts of explanation for the origin of stone tools in the modern period.

Lhwyd was Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum (MacGregor 2001, 125–144) and the object was recorded by Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (1683-1734), an 18th century traveller, as having been exhibited in a cabinet along with other ‘beautiful lapides pretiosi’ together with ‘crystals’, ‘topaz’ and ‘an amethyst, as large again as the above, but faulty’ (MacGregor 2001, 131). The description of the specimen in his diary reads as follows: ‘an uncommonly good glosso-petra, about seven inches long and two wide at the back, a lovely light green stone, almost like jasper’ (MacGregor 2001, 131). Lhwyd’s Lithophylacii Britanici Ichnographia (1699) also includes an engraved image of the specimen (MacGregor 2001).

According to Grayson, the recognition that stone tools represented the work of the human hand came during the late 1600s and early 1700s. Before that time, ‘all but the most obvious of stone artefacts were included along with other distinctively shaped, stony objects that came from in or on the ground in the general category of fossils, or things “dug up”’(Grayson 1983, 5). Thus prehistoric implements, often discovered in the earth during ploughing, circulated as fossils and were often found among collections of fossil objects, or collections of objects comprising anything from natural curiosities to ethnographic objects brought back from travel (MacGregor 1994, 180–197). Even though controversy on the origin of flint implements persisted throughout the 17th and 18th century, according to Grayson, after 1700 ‘arguments that stone tools were stone tools became almost routine (Grayson 1983, 6). This becomes clear also in the collections documented by the catalogues that survive today.

Even though Conrad Gessner’s (1516-1565) 1565 De rerum fossilium is perhaps the first source to depict a glossopetra next to a shark thus making the association between the two objects most apparent, in a paper of 1674 in Philosophical Transactions, Martin Lister (16391712) refers to ‘Mr Ray in his Travels’ on the matter of glossopetra offering a rather less straightforward interpretation of their origin than Gesner’s image might originally have suggested (Lister 1674, 223): Of the Glossopetrae (saith he) I have not yet heard, that there have been any found in England; which I do not a little wonder at, there being sharks frequently taken upon the coasts. I have had out of the isle of Shepy in the River of Thames, very sharks teeth dug up there; which could not be said to be petrified; though, as to the colour, they were somewhat guilded with a vitriolock tarnish at our first receiving them; but they were white, and in a short time came to their natural colour.

By 1686, for example, Robert Plot in his Natural history of Staffordshire (1686) already discusses and illustrates a series of stone tools as stone tools (Plot 1686; Piggott 1989). The makers of these implements, Plot writes ‘sharpen’d their warlike instruments rather with stone than metall’ (Plot 1686; Piggott 1989). Evidence of ‘art’, rather than extraordinary natural agencies, attests to the objects’ true origin, according to a number of authors that include Plot, but also a number of antiquaries starting with Woodward.

In the stone-quarries in Hinderskelf-Park, near Malton, I had this Stone (the scheme whereof I send you; Fig. I) the greatest rarity of this kind I ever met with, and which I took out of the rock there my self. It is a fair Glossopetra with 3 points, of a black liver-colour, and smooth; its edges are not ferrate; its basis is (like the true Teeth) of a rugged Substance; its is carved round the basis with imbossed Work: It hath certain eminent ridges or lines like Rays, drawn from the Basis to each Point.

As early as 1728 John Woodward (1665-1728) asserted, for example, that the ceraunia were in fact artificial formations using as an argument the evidence of art visible in the object (Woodward 1728; Levine 1997). Woodward’s evidence of ‘art’, in turn, not only displaced natural agencies and nature’s imitative powers from the repertoire of explanations so far employed, but comprised the only reliable explanation, as he argued. Any explanation beyond the evidence of ‘art’ was pure ‘Fancy’, Woodward asserts in his 1728 Fossils of all kinds digested into a method.

‘By human hand’: the recognition of the artificial origin of stone tools

Referring to the case of the ‘prehistoric’ stone tools, he writes that these objects (Woodward 1728),

If some of the 16th century views on the fossils were understood in the same period as examples of a ‘vulgar’ opinion, there is clear demarcation between superstitious beliefs projected onto prehistoric objects and pre-modern natural philosophy that through such explanations advocated in a self-coherent manner the primacy of nature’s imitative powers as a factor that extended in explanations

…carry in them so plain Tokens of Art, and their Shapes be such as apparently to point forth, to any Man that rightly considers them, the Use each was destin’d to; yet some of the Writers of Fossils, and of great Name too, have been so sanguine and hasty, so much blinded by the strength of their own Fancy, and prepossessed in Favour of their Schemes and Notions, that they have 26

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity set forth these Bodies as natural Productions of the Earth, under the names of Cerauniae.

He discusses the discoveries as ‘curious species of military weapons’ as it becomes clear from his ending note (Bishop Lyttelton , 122-123):

Woodward’s explanation impacted a long series of debates and writings that took place in the context of the Society of Antiquaries and the pages of Archaeologia, that were concerned with the origin of stone tools and the ‘celt’ in particular. If the first edition of Archaeologia came out in 1770 (Evans 1956, 53), from the 18th century onwards antiquaries controverted the origin of the celt by alluding to the evidence of its shape as suggestive of a number of often conflicting functions, referencing directly Woodward’s ‘token of art’ and ‘shapes’ such as ‘apparently’ to point forth the ‘use’. No mention of natural agencies as a form of explanation for the origin of the celt emerges from this context.

On the whole, I am of opinion that these stone axes are by far the most ancient remains existing at this day of our British Ancestors, and probably coaeval with the first inhabitants of this island. As such I flatter myself, this short dissertation, imperfect as it is, on this curious species of military weapons will not appear to you quite useless or unentertaining. And finally concludes by agreeing with Dugdale on their possible function. ‘I agree entirely with Dugdale’, he writes, ‘that they were British Instruments of war, and used by them before they had the art of making arms of brass or iron…’ (Bishop Lyttelton, 122). His interpretation of the discovery, in turn, takes place as a comparison between their form and forms described and often depicted by other authors in various sources including Bernard de Montfaucon’s Antiquité Expliquée, Plot’s Natural history of Staffordshire and Sir William Dugdale’s (1605-1686) History of Warwickshire.

In his ‘Observations on Celts’, for example, read to the Society of Antiquaries on 23 May 1776 with regard to an instrument ‘lately found by digging in the ruins’ that was ‘put into my hands, as a curiosity not unworthy the notice of the society’, Michael Lort (1725-1790) writes (Lort 1776, 107): In some respects it is similar to those instruments, called Celts, which have been found in great numbers in various parts of this island, and figured and described by various authors. These, in general have had one end sharp, as this has; but the other has been formed into a kind of groove, or socket, to fix a handle in…and seems intended to have been held in the hand only for use, whatever that use might have been…The learned antiquaries who have seen and considered these Celts, have differed much as to the uses for which they were designed.

Comparisons between forms, on the other hand, often took place as comparisons between unknown specimens and objects already forming part of collections. In comparing the forms of the objects discovered to those of objects kept in collections, the Bishop recounted specimens kept at the British Museum, distinguished according to form and the forms of ‘battle-axes, or hatchets’ and ‘the British instruments of brass, called Celts’ (Bishop Lyttelton, 122). All those which are reposited in the British Museum, where I lately examined several, which are all thin and elegant in their form, and composed of the hardest stone, as basaltes, flint, and the like…not one in this repository has any hole or perforation, so that they may rather resemble the British instruments of brass, called celts.

Another communication to the Society of Antiquaries on a discovery of ‘stone hatchets’ deals again with the controversy regarding the problem of attribution of a definite function to form, this time arguing for the hatchets being lethal instruments. The communication comes from Bishop Lyttelton’s (1714-1768) ‘Observations on Stone Hatchets’ ‘read at the Society of Antiquaries’ on March 6, 1776. The Bishop illustrates the forms and compares them to the forms that early naturalists had described and pictured while naming them ‘absurdly’ ceraunia (Bishop Lyttelton, 122):

Prestwich’s evidence of ‘design’ as evidence for the object’s artificial origin, in the light of the above discussion, cannot be seen as a solution distinct in nature from those articulated by antiquaries from the 18th century onwards and Woodward’s ‘token of art’ as an undeniable expression of the artificial origin of the celt. It was ‘regularity in structure’, rather than the object’s shape, in turn, that suggested evidence of ‘art and design’, in Prestwich’s 1859 communication. If regularity in structure showed art and design, the treatment of one form only, that of the hand axe, was enough for Prestwich to prove his argument in the context of what he called the ‘geological’ solution.

The stone I have now the honour of laying before you for your inspection, was found some years ago on ploughing some new unclosed pasture ground… It is undoubtedly what Gesner, Aldrovandi, and other early writers on Natural Philosophy, very absurdly name Ceraunia, or Thunder-bolts, affirming that they fall from the clouds in storms of thunder; and yet Aldrovandi asserts that they all resemble either a mallet, a wedge, or an axe or hatchet. The same author gives us engravings of six of them, four of which agree with mine, in having a hole, or perforation for the reception of a wooden helve, or handle.

‘In considering this point I have confined myself to the one set of implements termed “Haches” by Boucher de Perthes [1788-1868],’ he wrote (Prestwich 1860, 296). ‘It suffices for our purpose,’ he added, ‘in treating of the geological question, that we have one set of implements showing art and design’(Prestwich 1860, 296). Prestwich’s discussion of the ‘Nature and value of the evidence’ not 27

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor only described but depicted the evidence of art and design in the objects in a number of purpose-made illustrations, figs.5 and 8, in Plates XIII. & XIV from the paper, which showed precisely this ‘regularity in structure’ (Prestwich 1860, 295):

hazard and resulting from natural causes, as in a melee of gravel, would necessary multiply their direction of strike in proportion as the blows themselves were multiplied, and consequently the shape of the flint would tend, up to a certain point, to become more and more irregular, whereas on the contrary, with the flintimplements the more they are chipped and broken the clearer is the design.

One object is apparent throughout, that of giving to a hard durable substance a shape either sharp-pointed or cutting one with the other on each surface, but also carefully directed along and maintained on one given plane, and resulting in producing a symmetrical form. Under natural conditions of fracture, the greater number of blows would, on ordinary chances, fall on the broadest surfaces of these flints, and no sharp point and angle could be permanently maintained, still less gradually elaborated.

Wonder, modernity and the evidence of the 20th century ethnographic collection: rethinking the historiography of early modern wonder Even though a number of specimens from the early modern period and collections seen as cabinets of curiosities survive to our present day, it is sometimes isolated objects rather than intact collections retaining their taxonomic mannerisms that resist changes in styles of thought and disciplinary revision, a phenomenon and approach to knowledge most common in the period following the 19th century onwards. Arthur MacGregor has done an immense amount of work so far as the reconstruction and retracing of collections and catalogues is concerned and has published the manuscript catalogues of the early Ashmolean Museum collections (1863-1886) under AMS12 The book of the Dean of Christ Church (1756) which are also useful for this paper. This catalogue lists at least two entries of flints

‘Fracture’ produced by natural forces, in turn, was always irregular he emphasized drawing attention to one exemption, the case of the simple flint flakes (Prestwich 1860, 295): It may happen that a shattered flint (by whatever natural cause produced) should give flakes or splinters closely resembling simple forms produced by one or two blows applied artificially. But here the coincidence must cease; for it is obvious that blows applied by

Figure 5. The Bellucci collection of prehistoric implements as amulets, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Reproduced by permission of the Pitt Rivers Museum. 28

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity The Ancient Stone Implements, for example, gives significant consideration not only to the ‘archaeological’ ‘rude implements from the drift’ as evidence of man’s remote antiquity, but considers and reviews an extensive number of early beliefs surrounding the question of origin and nature of prehistoric stone tools before prehistory. In this context, Evans reproduces the opinions of authors and collectors of the early modern period, as well as accounts on this class of objects by modern authors and collectors interested in folklore.

as recorded by MacGregor: ‘Arrow-head [Mucro sagitta] of white agate, slightly reddish’ as number 47; and number 48, an ‘Arrow-head of a dark, orange-coloured agate, in its place an arrow head of white agate’. Many of the objects described in the manuscript, in turn, can be traced back to the original cabinet of curiosities comprised by the Tradescants, as MacGregor notes, thus leaving some space to us for some 20th century conjecture on the role of archaeological specimens in the original core of the Ashmolean Museum before its foundation in the Tradescants’ collection (MacGregor and M. Mendonça 2000, 33). It is among the ethnographic collections from the 19th century and early 20th century, however, that one may find an intact and coherent display of prehistoric implements as thunderbolts that retains the early modern thought style in a modern taxonomy. Oxford very conveniently provides one such example.

It is Balfour’s writings on thunderbolts however, that give us an extensive account of the collections of objects that are kept among the Oxford museums and their provenance that ‘revive’ pre-modern beliefs and explanations for the origin of prehistoric tools in the context of late 19th century and early 20th century popular belief, as the latter is collected by anthropologists and ethnologists interested in the study of folklore. In his paper of 1929b ‘Concerning thunderbolts’, Balfour makes special mention of Bellucci and the collection of amulets consisting of mounted prehistoric stone tools still part of the Pitt Rivers Museum display.

The Bellucci collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford comprises a number of ‘prehistoric objects’ thought to have been thunderbolts and collected as ‘charms and amulets’ around the world in the late 19th century, early 20th century (Figure 5).

Balfour depicts Bellucci’s amulets in ‘Fig. 2’ of his first plate (Figure 6) describing the object in the caption as (1929b, 168):

If the pre-modern irrational view of the thunderbolt and definition of the fossil in the course of the 19th century gave its place to its modern counterpart, the modern notion of the stone tool as archaeological specimen, ethnography and the formation of ethnographic collections in the 19th century and the study of folklore is a rich source of ‘ethnographic’ evidence for the reconstruction of this premodern belief.

very small ground celt of hard, dark stone. Perugia, Italy. From Dr. G. Bellucci’s collection. This tiny celt appears too small for practical use. The perforation, drilled from both surfaces after the stone-age fashion, is only suitable for suspension. This celt was kept by peasants as a ‘thunderbolt’, folgore and was carried as protection against lighting.

Early modern irrational belief and collections of natural wonders become re-presented in the 19th century and via ethnography as expressions of a different disciplinary domain and rationalised forms of material evidence: having been natural wonders attesting to order of nature they become specimens of folklore.

Balfour’s second plate includes also a fragment of a belemnite under ‘figure 17’ which Balfour describes (1929b, 171) as ‘portion of a belemnite which was preserved by Oxfordshire peasants and was used for medicinal purposes.’ ‘This has been a common practice in the country up to the present day’, he adds, ‘belemnites being popularly regarded as ‘thunderbolts’ possessing magical therapeutic qualities’ (1929b, 171).

The irrational as folklore: disciplinary change and the collection Irrational belief surrounding prehistoric flints is the object of study for a number of 19th century and 20th century authors and collectors interested in folklore. Even though some are clearly writers who address a wider audience (such as Lovett), others have also been practising archaeologists such as John Evans and Bellucci himself. As shown by a handwritten note – a dedication to Sir John Evans that appears in one of his books today in the Sackler Library at Oxford, Bellucci was probably in direct contact with Evans not least because of their shared interests in anthropology as well as archaeology as documented in reciprocal citations in their work. Evans’s Oxford-based connections with anthropology are documented in a number of letters kept at the Pitt Rivers Museum Archive today, and his interest in ethnology and thunderbolts is also apparent in his published archaeological writings.

Balfour’s second plate is filled in turn with a number of specimens of mounted prehistoric stone implements that resemble the display of the Bellucci collection in the Pitt Rivers closely including under ‘figure 19’ a ‘large flint arrowhead, mounted in silver, with suspension ring’ collected in Aquila, Abruzzi, in Italy and forming part of ‘the collection of Dr. G. Bellucci’ (1929b, 172) (Figure 7). Along with the description of the object in the caption, Balfour makes references to Bellucci’s works and illustrations in his books but also John Evans’s Ancient Stone Implements (1897). ‘Same data as the last’, Balfour writes referring to the mounted arrowhead, ‘see Bellucci, Amuleti italiani (1898), Gli amuleti (1908) and La grandine nell’ Umbria.’ (Balfour, 1929b, 172)

29

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 6. Bellucci’s amulet as ‘Figure 2’ from Henry Balfour’s plate I depicting ‘thunderbolts’, Balfour, H. Concerning thunderbolts (Continued). The resistance of the belief in the thunderbolt against the wide acceptance of their ‘archaeological’ meaning, as this account shows, went hand in hand with the persistence of the object’s original context of display, in this case the original owners’ homes and property. ‘A polished Neolithic celt’, Wright and Lovett wrote in their discussion of ‘modern mascots and ancient amulets’, ‘found deposited upon the open roof beam of a cottage near Portrush, Ireland, had been regarded as a thunderbolt, and a belemnite was so regarded in Surrey’ (Wright and Lovett 1908, 289). The Neolithic celt was depicted by the authors in the paper among other images of ‘mascots and amulets of the British Isles’ as ‘figure II, plate VI’ (Figure 8).

Balfour thought that these examples of irrational, popular belief have had a direct impact on the very progress of archaeology and the foundations of prehistory as a historical phenomenon. ‘To the prehistorian “thunderbolts” are a matter of concern, inasmuch as they have played a part, – as a retarding agency it is true, – in the developmental progress of his science’, he writes. (Balfour, 1929a, 40) The resistance of these beliefs to the ‘progress of archaeology’, but also the persistence of such belief against archaeological explanation was also commented on, in turn, by Wright and Lovett in their 1908 account of thunderbolts as amulets and mascots.

30

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity

Figure 7. ‘Large flint arrowhead, mounted in silver, with suspension ring’ collected in Aquilla, Abruzzi, in Italy and forming part of ‘the collection of Dr. G. Bellucci’ as Fig. 19 in Balfour 1929b, pl. II, ‘thunderbolts’. The difficulties in ‘securing’ such specimens which they recounted however attests to the resistance of objects, contexts and older beliefs towards new explanations such as the archaeological one, in the context of early 20th century and in a period that follows the foundations of modern archaeology and prehistory. In the paper, ‘the story of a beautifully polished green stone celt shown’ which they recount, ‘illustrates the difficulty of obtaining such objects from their possessors (Wright and Lovett 1908, 289). The authors write (Wright and Lovett 1908, 289):

wished to add it to his collection of stone implements. The owner, however, would not part with it, saying that it was a thunderbolt and would save his family from sickness and harm. He was offered five shillings, but would not listen to the offers. The following year Mr. Lovett again called upon the owner of the thunderbolt, and offered him fifteen shillings, for it, with no result. The bid was raised to twenty shillings without success. Balfour’s ‘delay’ to the ‘progress’ of archaeology and prehistory that thunderbolts and the belief in them posed was not a question of change in opinion only. Change in opinion, on the contrary was mediated by the dissolution

About twenty-five years ago, during a visit to Jersey, Mr Lovett found this celt in a labourer’s cottage, and much 31

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 8. Image of a neolithic celt. Wright and Lovett 1908, Plate VI.

and re-ordering of collections according to the new disciplinary divisions imposed by modernity. To this process, older contexts of display and notions posed a significant resistance as the case of the thunderbolts as modern ethnographic specimens and the attempt to collect them as such shows. The transition from the early modern belief to the modern archaeological explanation in the same light cannot be seen as straightforward a process as a history of ideas isolated from the material contexts in which such ideas become embodied in the case of collections would suggest. Nor might the ‘recognition’ of the archaeological meaning of these objects be seen

as a process and a phenomenon disentangled from old meanings as the latter are intertwined with visual and material modes of display and representation. 19th century and early 20th century ethnography and the formation of ethnographic collections, such as Bellucci’s, testify to the subtle nuances particular to archaeology’s ‘progress’ by making visible the resistance and in fact the role of older systems of thought and their material counterparts in objects, collections and styles of display in the process by means of which modern ideas about formed stones in the shape of stone tools became widely accepted. 32

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity Even though the history of modern archaeology, like archaeological practice itself and the practice of collecting and displaying objects focuses on stories of progress and success, rejected knowledge, such as for example earlier and competing notions of the prehistoric stone tools such as the thunderbolt are much more closely connected to these stories than historians have often maintained.

by her with something more than the common pride of ornament–‘there was a real attachment to it; as the possessor of a charm or amulet at this day would be unhappy without the favoured object round his neck or arm, so was it with the old lady.’ Then he proceeded to disassociate the superstitious belief and title ascribed to the object from the amulet, inscribing its modern meaning, archaeological significance. This negotiation in the object’s meaning not only entailed a conceptual negotiation, thinking about the amulet as a decorative flint tool as opposed to a natural object that carried extraordinary powers, but it mediated by the visual transformation of the object’s original context of presentation and display, here its silver mounting.

In the light of the above discussion it becomes clear that the foundations of modern archaeology and the formation of collections of archaeological specimens relied in a major way on types of ‘rejected’ knowledge such as the thunderbolt. The latter not only provided the material basis for the narration of progress itself, but its presence and materiality and the appropriation of the object itself was crucial to the appropriation of the earlier system of thought it stood for in order to be substituted by the modern archaeological style of thought. This process was as much a process of conceptual negotiation as well as an interaction at the social level.

Once stripped of its ‘decorative’ and ornamental details that had been connected to its special character as an amulet, unlike its supposedly natural origin, the object could happily be what it ought to be in Lukis’s reasoning, an archaeological fact. The ‘elf-shot’ in plate xx of his paper was in fact a mounted ‘barbed flint-arrow-head’, he asserted. To make his point clearer he depicted along with the amulets, flint arrow heads that stressed the similarity between the two classes of objects. The ‘elf-shot’ was nothing but a mounted arrow-head, he repeated, and while rejecting its prior title as superstitious he referred to it instead as an ‘early instrument’. Lukis wrote (Lukis, 1866-7, 207):

Indeed, to obtain specimens, antiquaries and collectors had to be aware and in fact engage with ‘superstitious’ beliefs, not only at a conceptual level, but also at the social level, via interaction with practically all segments of British society in addition to that of antiquaries, men of science, or collectors. This becomes clear in the following example from Lukis. In negotiating the acquisition of new specimens encountered accidentally by peasants in the fields, collectors had first to instruct the wider strata of society about the new meanings these objects had acquired. Writing to The Reliquary in 1867 Frederick Lukis (1788-1871), for example, discussed in his paper ‘The elf-shot and the elfin-dart of the north’ a number of superstitious beliefs, depicting also the way in which such specimens illustrating these beliefs were in fact prehistoric objects and indeed archaeological specimens that had been modified in order to acquire a decorative or sacred significance.

The Stone Celt, as well as the Flint Arrow-head, are now so well known, that the superstitious title here given to these objects, as in days of yore, will in a few years more probably be entirely forgotten. These early instruments of offence or of the chase…[have been] the wonderment of our forefathers, until a very late period; yet still the shepherd or labourer who now finds them considers them with surprise, and even with awe, if not with some notion of reverence or superstition. Once dissociated from its old meaning and context of presentation and display, the object could finally form part of a new collection, illustrating a different understanding of the true nature of the object but also acting as evidence for a new disciplinary domain. This in fact had been the objective of Lukis’s negotiation, visual and conceptual in the first place as his ending remark shows.

The category of objects Lukis discussed, the ‘elf-shot’, was, as he explained a flint tool believed to have been cast by fairies from the skies, kept by the common people as an amulet and a charm. A different system of belief embodied in the object in its original context was transcribed in Lukis’s narration to a visual characteristic. The object’s status as an amulet was embodied, he suggested, in its decorative appearance rather than supernatural power, the object of belief that the artefact expressed in its original context. Its archaeological character was concealed by its decorative appearance visible in the mounting of the object in silver, he suggested.

‘It may be well to note in connection with the subject of this highly interesting paper’, Lukis concluded (1866-7, 207), …that a somewhat similar superstition regarding flint arrow and spear-heads obtains in Derbyshire. These instruments are with some of the inhabitants looked upon as fairy darts, and are supposed to have been used by the fairies in injuring and wounding cattle. Happily this belief is rapidly wearing out, and the peasant who would formerly have destroyed a flint when found, now takes care of it, and brings it to myself or some other collector.

Lukis described and depicted the object first in a drawing (Lukis, 1866-7, 207). I forward a drawing of one which was mounted in silver and which was suspended to the neck of an old lady from Scotland, for half-a-century. It was worn 33

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Reconstructing wonder against diachronic and synchronic evidence: from the curious and the decorative to early modern painting and contemporary art

opposed to that of rupture, that the transition from early modern wonder into modernity entailed. While often cast as a rejected item of knowledge that marks the historical transition from the pre-modern to the modern period, the early modern ceraunia – and depictions and collections of natural wonders against the evidence of 16th century visual and verbal sources such as the illustration of the early modern natural philosophy treatise and the evidence of printed catalogues describing the collections of cabinets of curiosities – against the ethnographic testimony of 20th century collections, such as the one afforded by the Bellucci collection of amulets at the Pitt Rivers Museum, present us with a different historiographic picture of transition.

If superstitious meaning was tagged as of ‘cultural’ significance in the domain of ethnology in the turn of 19th and 20th centuries, the archives of the Pitt Rivers Museum attest to a wealth of material that describes ethnography’s role in transforming and transcribing older explanations for the origin of prehistoric implements rejected by the modern system of thought into novel conceptual categories associated with new disciplines such as the ‘decorative’ and the ‘ornamental’, both used by modern ethnology. The Oakley papers in the same archive and the resulting publication of Oakley’s extensive research and communication discusses precisely the ‘decorative’ and ‘symbolic’ uses of fossils, being thus example of a modern incident in recycling older systems of thought and interpretation based on older taxonomic styles and styles of presentation that become re-cast in domains that were novel in disciplinary terms, here post 19th century museum ethnography. A significant number of amulets that Kenneth Oakley (1911-1981) lists as fossils with a decorative use however, might have been (or indeed were) derived from earlier collections which can be traced back to the early modern period (Oakley 1976).

The latter, rather than attesting to the idea of discontinuity, engages with the idea of transformation. This process of transformation, in the writings of Henry Balfour on the modern fate of early modern wonder, concerned the disentangling of ethnographic fact from archaeological explanation, and had brought about what he called in retrospect the ‘progress of prehistory’. Yet, in addition to consequences and notions of order, of a disciplinary kind, that wonder’s modern legacies entailed, concepts and contexts that allowed for such ‘wonderful’ transitions as the turning of the Bellucci collection of amulets into an anthropological object of knowledge – the decorative being a key notion in this context, remain outside such a narration and transition. The latter nevertheless comprises a context that, as Bellucci’s collection of amulets shows, allowed for the transition of notions associated with material forms and objects of early modern wonder in modernity expressed in the idea and location of the collection, from an irrational thing into an expression of modern disciplinary division in realms of knowledge. Collections of objects, but also categories of artefacts, that reference early modern notions of wonder, but become routinely cast as art or decorative objects in art historical studies concentrating on the testimony of visual evidence only, merit a reconsideration, in this light, as well as other categories of artefacts that seem to transcend the traditional boundaries of art.

The Bellucci collection, on the other hand, is an example of display that shows how museum ethnography shared the same interest in prehistoric antiquities encountered in different contexts within archaeology at a time when modern archaeology was already in place. Knowledge of these beliefs and the illustration of amulets-thunderbolts, in turn, were not as we have seen information out of place for archaeological works and archaeological collectors as John Evans’s Ancient Stone Implements shows. Collections and illustrations of natural wonders and ceraunia, whether interpreted as embodiments of irrational or pre-modern beliefs on the origin of formed stones in the shape of prehistoric stone tools before the foundations of prehistory, or demarcations between the early modern period and modernity, can hardly justify, against the evidence of 20th century ethnographic collections, the historiography of rupture to account for the early modern to modern transitions. On the contrary, as the ethnographic evidence of 20th century ethnographic collections shows, modern thought and transition into a modern style of thought via disciplinary divisions hardly erased the category of the irrational from the objects of scientific inquiry, grouping it instead under the novel discipline of ethnography, archaeology and the study of folklore.

Categories of amulets that like Bellucci’s ‘superstitious’ prehistoric stone tools incorporate natural objects like fossils into manmade things and which are seen to have, as the Bellucci objects do, votive-magical-decorative significance, yet beyond the cultural practices which ascribe them with meaning in modernity may be seen to retrace early modern notions of natural things as objects of wonder, may be reconsidered in this context. Linking histories of collecting and collections to intellectual history, in a way that draws on visual sources and artefacts of a considerably more varied scope than initial collectors’ ambition would have anticipated, in a way that perhaps alludes to the early modern encyclopaedic ambition of cabinets of curiosity, coincidentally but not as a methodological imperative, is perhaps key in this context. Drawing on the earlier reference to Martin Kemp’s essay on Palissy, and Kemp’s making of Palissy’s pots into ‘philosophical things’ in a 16th century sense, but also in looking at his broader project for a History of the visual

The foundations of this discipline took place at a time when the archaeological significance of such objects was also widely accepted as a canonical fact. The contemporaneity of both archaeological and ethnographic claims to the meaning and legacy of the thunderbolt in the modern period attests, in turn, to the process of transformation, as 34

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity that incorporates artefacts that are not traditionally cast as art, and on Arthur MacGregor’s work on the history of collecting, I would like to suggest, in conclusion, that one may perhaps begin reconsidering the collection as a form of testimony that may be seen as a location for historiographic revision that attests, at the same time, to broader developments concerned with the history of art history and the history of collecting as a branch of the latter, as it may be seen to have lapsed between early writings on the history of collecting and Arthur MacGregor’s work, to the benefit of both.

object that transcends the order of nature. Like wonders as the objects of collecting among cabinets encountered in the collections of fossils and formed stones that continue well through to the 17th century, as Plot’s Oxford based Natural History and its illustrations derived from Oxford based collections shows, birth plates play up the theme of imitation by referencing ideas of imprint and replication against form, that allow for the production of imagery from the artificial world into the natural by way of influencing birth and the appearance of the baby. Pregnant woman should be looking at pictures of beauty since pregnancy and giving birth also entailed the danger of one’s replicating forms unfit for a beautiful newborn baby; birth plates being comparable objects, in this light, to Plot’s collections and illustrations of fossils. Yet, Plot’s illustrations of natural things as looking artificial, one of the possibilities and visual conditions of the early modern notion of natural wonder in the context of early modern discourses on Imitation may also include categories of objects that extend the decorative into what has been used to exemplify histories of Art, conceived as histories of painting, in particular. Then, Dürer’s rock study might well be grouped under early modern discussions of the idea of wonder, if one relates the latter to the intellectual context of early modern discourses on imitation. The fact that such a discourse seems irrelevant to art discourses should not be left outside our current historiographic revisions of collections of early modern wonder; at least if the history of collecting is to be understood as part of the broader discipline, and the problems of method that gave rise to it in the context of early scholarship, namely the History of Art.

Palissy ware in the context of Martin Kemp’s essay and Arthur MacGregor’s work on the history of the early modern cabinets of curiosities is an example that attests to the complexities but also possibilities for revision and reflexion that the collection, as a material and epistemological thing, poses for the discipline of art history and its methods. Their position and one’s positioning towards this category of artifice both in taking into consideration the history of ideas but also collections, is illuminating in this light. The position of such objects in contemporary displays that adopt the classificatory division of the ‘decorative’, and the question of whether in the light of the above, such a category should be represented and represent this category of objects as illustrations of a contemporary notion stripped bare of its prior historical significance is worth asking for methodological reasons. To recast the category of the decorative arts as context for the collection in this particular example is to recast the history of objects that while taken as simply decorative today in the context of the history of ideas transcend domains of knowledge and disciplinary divisions constructed in the 19th century, providing historiographic evidence for transition from the one to the other. Does this mean that, in practice, Palissy ware should be displayed in addition to a decorative arts museum, such as the V&A, in a museum that emerged out of an initial nucleus comprising a cabinet of curiosity such as the Ashmolean Museum? If the latter is the case and both institutions have in their possessions and collections such objects today I would like to rephrase the question into whether both Museums should cross reference their displays and contexts of display, the decorative emerging thus as a category rich in meanings and historiographically important both for the history of collecting as well as the history of ideas and art.

The collection and the tradition of history of collecting launched at Oxford by the work of Francis Haskell and continued in the work of Arthur MacGregor introduced an important moment and phase in the development of Art History as a modern, professional and academic discipline itself. Whether the latter also entails thinking broadly about collections against other kinds of evidence, visual and material, or, on the other hand, whether art historical writing should be informed by the demands of materiality, via a consideration of the notion and presence of the collection, present two questions of equal significance. If Arthur MacGregor’s work may be seen as a response to the second question, following on the tradition of Haskell’s writings, I would like to end this paper with an image from the history of art and the early modern period in juxtaposition to Plot’s illustrations (Figure 9), namely Dürer’s rock study (Figure 10), as an example of an image, which could hardly justify as evidence for an argument on early modern wonder if judged against the history of collecting and collections of early modern wonders, against an understanding of the collection as a tangible entity fixed in the actuality of one’s modern experience of the world. Looking at the collection as a border object on the other hand, and also as evidence of historical time in the context of art history and intellectual history, a different grouping and relevance of Dürer’s study emerges both for the history of collecting and the history of art. While at a visual level

To extend the question into other categories of objects that while displayed today as part of the category ‘decorative arts’ seem equivalent to amulets, and Palissy’s philosophically turned decorative pots, to contain the potential for historiographic revision but also historical explanation, I would like to briefly refer to another group of objects also kept among the V&A collections, namely, the collection of painted birth plates. While decorative objects, their early histories, in the context of the history of ideas and art, describe them by recourse to notions that, equivalent to many early modern wonders, touch on the very notion of early modern wonder and its definition as the product of nature’s imitative power giving rise to an 35

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 9. Stones relating to Air, or to the Watery Kingdom (Thunder-bolts, stalactites, Cockle-stones), from Plot 1705. Jesus College, Oxford.

it is not comparable to Plot’s delineations, underlying both images there is the same preoccupation with the idea of imitation and Nature’s extraordinary powers of imitation evident in fossils and formed stones, according to Plot, that often lead to the replication of art itself, or artful form, or artificial looking form by nature; Dürer’s study can be seen to refer to this notion, his study of rock adopting a fragmented and geometrical form that is at the same time animated but also distinct from the chance formations one encounters in nature, one that appears to incorporate evidence of skill or design that Prestwich discussed in 1859 in his prototypical essay on stones as Palaeolithic tools presented to the Royal Society, in a complete inversion of the argument on imitation. Modernity’s inversion of the early modern discourse on imitation and its location, the early modern wonder, may hardly be seen as a location, in conclusion, lacking potential for artistic output, as recent

work in contemporary art suggests. Gabriel Orozco’s negative sculptures derived from his use of socks as moulds may be seen to refer to early modern strategies of wonder, ascribed to nature in the context of imitation and leading to a series of natural wonders like those illustrated by Plot. Yet, Orozco’s sculptures are clearly artificial things and products of his thinking processes, while at the same time, their classification into the domain of contemporary art, seems the question that matters; Orozco’s work receiving significance from the ambiguity that his objects elicit, and from their resistance, at the same time, to clear-cut disciplinary divisions concerned with the art and nature divide, a theme dear to the early modern period as the history of collecting and early modern wonder following the perceptive and rigorous work of Arthur MacGregor makes clear.

36

Assimina Kaniari: Wonder after modernity

Figure 10. Dürer. Landscape study; a rocky cliff. 1495-1500 Watercolour and bodycolour, over black chalk British Museum SL,5218.166AN117925. Digital print courtesy of the BM.

Bibliography

Evans, J. 1956. A History of the Society of the Antiquaries. Oxford, University Press. Frere, J. 1797. Account of flint weapons discovered at Hoxne in Suffolk. Archaeologia 13, 204–205. Geike, A. 1905. The Founders of Geology. London, Macmillan. Georg Agricola. 1546; 1955. De natura fossilium. Translated by M. C. Bandy and J. A. Bandy. New York, Geological Society of America. Gesner, C. 1565. De rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum maxime figuris et similitudinibus Liber. Tiguri, cited in Rudwick, M. 1972. The Meaning of Fossils. London, MacDonald. Grayson, D. 1983. The Establishment of Human Antiquity. New York, Academic Press. Impey, O. and MacGregor, A. (eds.), 1983. The Origins of Museums. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Kemp, M. 1999. Palissy’s philosophical pots: ceramics, grottoes and the ‘matrice’ of the earth. In Tega W. (ed.), Le origini della modernità II: Linguaggi e saperi nel XVII secolo, 69-87. Firenze, L. S. Olschki.

Adams, F. D. 1938. The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences. Baltimore, The William and Wilkins Company. Agricola, De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum, book V, cited in Emmanuel König. 1703. Regnum Minerale. Basileae, König, cited in Adams 1938. Agricola, G. 1546. De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum, book V. Basel, Frobenius. Albinus, P. 1590. Meissnische Berg Chronica, Dresden, G. Berg, cited in Adams 1938. Balfour, H. 1929a. Concerning thunderbolts. Folklore 40 (Mar. 31), 37-49. Balfour, H. 1929b. Concerning thunderbolts (Continued). Folklore 40 (Jun. 30), 168-172. Daniel, G. and Renfrew, C. 1988. The Idea of Prehistory. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Evans, J. 1872. The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments, of Great Britain. London, Longmans.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Kentmann, J. 1565. Nomenclaturae rerum fossilium. Zürich: excudebat Jacobus Gesnerus, cited in Adams 1938. Levine, J. 1977. Dr Woodward’s shield: history, science and satire in Augustan England. Berkeley, University of California Press. Lister, M. 1674. Some observations and experiments made, and in a letter communicated to the publisher, for the R. Society, by the learned and inquisitive Mr. Martin Lister. Philosophical Transactions 9, 221-226. Lort, M. 1776. Observations on celts. Archaeologia 2, 116-118. Lukis, F. 1866-7. The elf-shot and the elfin-dart of the north. The Reliquary 7, 207–208. Lyell, C. 1859. Address of the president, Sir Charles Lyell, on opening the section of geology, at the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen, Sept. 15th, 1859. The Aberdeen Free Press and Buchan News, Friday, Sept. 16. Lyell papers, Edinburgh University Library. MacGregor A and Mendonça, M. 2000. The Manuscript Catalogues of the Early Ashmolean Museum Collections (1863–1886). Oxford, BAR Publishing. MacGregor, A. 1994. Prehistoric and Romano-British antiquities. In A. Macgregor, A. (ed.), Sir Hans Sloane Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, Founding Father of the British Museum, 180–197. London, British Museum Press. MacGregor, A. 2001. The Ashmolean as a museum of natural history, 1638–1860’. Journal of the History of Collections 13, 125–144. Oakley, K. P. 1976. Decorative and Symbolic Uses of Vertebrate Fossils. Occasional Papers on Technology 12. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Piggott, S. 1989. Ancient Britons and the Antiquarian Imagination. Ideas from the Renaissance to the Regency. London: Thames and Hudson. Plot, R. 1705. The Natural history of Oxfordshire. Oxford, Printed at the theatre. Prestwich, J. 1860. On the occurrence of flint-implements, associated with the remains of extinct species in beds of a late geological period, in France at Amiens and Abbeville, and in England at Hoxne, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal society of London 150, 277317. Rudwick, M. 1972. The Meaning of Fossils. London, MacDonald. Schnapp, A. 1996. The discovery of the past: the origins of archaeology. London, British Museum Press. Sklenar, K. 1983. Archaeology in Central Europe: the first 500 years. New York, Leicester University Press. Thorndike, L. 1941. A history of magic and experimental science. New York, Columbia University Press. Torrens, H. 1985. Early collecting in the field of geology. In MacGregor A. and Impey, O (eds.), The origins of museums; the cabinet of curiosities in 16th and 17th century Europe, 204–213. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Woodward, J. 1728. Fossils of all kinds digested into a method, suitable to their mutual relation and affinity.

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Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 Timothy Wilks Abstract This essay seeks to further our knowledge of the assembling of Charles I’s art collections, establishing a connection to the plunder of art during the Thirty Years’ War. An encounter between Archibald Rankin, a Scottish diplomat, and the news-gatherer, John Pory confirms the early establishment of Charles I’s reputation abroad as an art collector. Rankin is the first to recognise that the Swedish king, Gustav II Adolf’s military ambitions and Charles I’s collecting ambitions might converge on Munich, the seat of Maximilian I of Bavaria. It is shown, however, that artworks taken from Munich eventually reached Whitehall not through Rankin’s agency but through the separate efforts of two of Charles I’s courtiers who witnessed the city’s capture in 1632: James, Marquess of Hamilton, and Sir Henry Vane. Keywords Art plunder, Art collections, Kunstkammern, paintings, statuary, Thirty Years’ War, Sweden, Germany, Munich, Whitehall Palace, Charles I, king of England, Gustav II Adolf, king of Sweden, James, 3rd Marquess of Hamilton, Sir Henry Vane the Elder, Archibald Rankin, John Pory.

While still in its formative period, an art collection of any ambition is a thing of uncertainty; much like any work of art before the moment that its creator accepts its completeness. Has not the claim been made that an art collection is, in itself, a work of art? Among all the objects ever considered for inclusion in a collection are not only those which are acquired but also those which are quickly denied, as well as those which might be pursued for years without success. A collection, therefore, may be conceived as a set of desired objects that at various moments proved attainable, beyond which, often forgotten in the context of that collection, lies a peripheral set of the never-attained. Opportunity, obstacle, accident, and finance; decide into which set each sought-after object falls. It is possible to envisage many different combinations of the attainable and the unattainable that, but for circumstances, might have constituted a finalized collection.

advisers, agents, and – where a system of patronage operated – by clients, seeking to ingratiate themselves by bringing word of vulnerable collections together with their ready-made, predatory schemes. Such wider consideration may also reveal more about the state of the market at a particular moment, about the stability and instability of other collections, about matters of taste, scale of ambition, and even about relations between states. That essential collection of essays, The Late King’s Goods (MacGregor 1989), edited by the honorand of this volume, makes plain in its sub-title that, as a collective assessment, it owes much to the rich primary material of the Commonwealth sale inventories, meticulously edited by Sir Oliver Millar, seventeen years earlier (Millar 1972). Such an initiative was clearly necessary, as surprisingly little on the collection of Charles I, certainly on the collection as a whole, had appeared in the interim.1 Even more curiously, much the same may be said for those decades: the ’60s and ’70s, which followed Millar’s earlier, foundational work on the collection of Charles I – his indispensable edition of Abraham Van Der Doort’s catalogue (Millar 1960).2 It was as if these two formidable Walpole Society volumes had fallen amid Caroline specialists with concussive effect.

Should the historian of collections be concerned at all with that set, described above, containing the once desired but never acquired objects, in order to consider variants of collection that never came into being? Would it be to stray into that speculative territory where budding historians are warned never to go; now productive of a thriving genre known as ‘alternative history’? Even though there is a distinguished line of historians, from Livy to Niall Ferguson, who have unashamedly engaged in ‘whatmight-have-been’ historical narrative without significant loss of reputation, that which is offered here (the reader is assured) is no such departure from the recorded past. For, to examine missed opportunities, abandoned efforts, and frustrations, is not to ignore the real statement of an achieved collection in favour of a discarded fantasy, but to learn more of a collector’s aspirations – not merely for specific items, but for the collection as a whole, and for the role and status of that collection. In the case of a great collection, aspirations for it are likely to have been held not only by its owner, but by numerous others also: curators,

* My thanks to Edward Chaney for reading a draft of this essay, and to Charles Avery for his advice on the sculptures. 1 An informative and authoritative summary of Charles’s collection is found in Millar (1977, 29–63). A more discursive essay on the function of art at Charles I’s court appears in Parry (1981, 213–29). Important details continued to emerge as catalogues of the pictures in the collection of H. M. the Queen were published: White (1982); Shearman (1983); Campbell (1985). Supplementary to the essays in MacGregor (1989) is Loomie (1989); on the sales, see also Pritchard (1980). 2 Millar’s catalogue for the Tate Gallery’s The Age of Charles exhibition (Millar 1972) concentrates on the patronage of artists; details of many individual works and their provenances are to be found in the earlierpublished catalogues of the Queen’s pictures: Millar (1963); Levey (1964); studies of specific episodes in the growth of the collection are: Bruyn and Millar (1962); Harris (1967); Trapier (1967); Lightbown (1969); presaging Millar’s edition of the inventories is Nuttall (1965).

39

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor to Latinise an imaginary book, Believe in Thy Havings, and Thou Hast Them, satirically described as ‘A test for antiquities, being a great book on small things’, which he attributed to Sir Walter (Donne 1930; Preston, 2006, 97–99). From an early point in his career, therefore, Pory had observed the collecting phenomenon, and would have been aware that great collections were often weathercocks to change in the relationships between the great.

The question had become one of where next to go with study of this great, and in some senses unsurpassed, collection. Both its origins and its extraordinary end seemed to invite investigation. It seemed, therefore, potentially rewarding to inquire to what extent these collections were evolutionary, and to what extent there had been an active collecting tradition at the English court immediately prior to Charles I’s accession (see Wilks 1997). Also requiring elucidation were the processes of dismemberment, dispersal, and partial retrieval of the collections during the 1650s and 1660s (see Brown 1994, 10–93; Gleissner 1994; Brown and Elliott 2002; Brotton 2006; Brotton and McGrath 2008).3 Concentration on these termini, however, runs the risk of producing a somewhat deterministic, if not teleological, view of the collections. It may, therefore, serve as a mild corrective to take a step sideways, so to speak, and retrieve an instance of the unattainable that has lain forgotten since 1632.

By the 1630s, Pory had long been sending a few friends and patrons, sometimes for a fee, informative and accurate newsletters. It was to one of these patrons, John, Viscount Scudamore, that, on 7 April, 1632, Pory reported meeting a man even better connected than he, and scarcely less travelled, though in different parts. The crucial passage reads: Archibald Rankin a Scott that hath many yeares dependence upon the king of Sweden, supposing that by this time he may bee in the Dukedom of Bavaria hath besought from our king his Majesties letters of recommendation to put his Majesty of Sweden in minde of his promise, when he was with him 4 yeares agon (but upon Rankins owne motion and suite) that if he ever became Master of Bavaria, hee would bestowe upon Rankin all the pictures and statues which that Duke hath in his Palace at Munichen. (Powell 1977, microfiche 242).

John Pory, the celebrated translator of Leo Africanus, former member of Parliament, and former secretary of the Virginia colony, was fifty years old in 1632, and confining his movements, if not his mind, to London (Powell 1977; ODNB). He had spent periods of his life in Ireland, Paris, The Hague, Turin, Padua, Constantinople, and Jamestown. He was himself something of a rarity, having survived four crossings of the Atlantic. Though a graduate of Cambridge, his prodigious learning, especially in languages, had also been recognized by Oxford, which incorporated him as MA in 1610. It was only natural, therefore, that he should later wish to be among those whose donations helped realize the late Sir Thomas Bodley’s ambition of a revived university library. In Constantinople he had acted as secretary to the English ambassador, Sir Paul Pindar, and had acquired there a manuscript Dīwān of Hāfez and a few Chinese printed books and leaves, which, sometime after his return in 1617, he donated to the Bodleian Library.4

At our most sceptical, we might hesitate to give credence to this report, if we regard Pory as a returned scholar gipsy, reduced in his declining years to retailing gossip. Pory, at this time, however, was still a respected gatherer and evaluator of news, to be found, when he was not seeking out his many contacts, in the printing house of Nathaniel Butter and Nicholas Bourne, where the pioneering ‘coranto’: Weekly News from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries went to press, for which Pory wrote and translated foreign material (Powell 1977, 55–59). In the same year, Butter and Bourne would publish the first issue of the Swedish Intelligencer, and for a time this printing house operated as an effective commercial news agency.

Pory’s appreciation of book and manuscript collections is to be expected of an Elizabethan scholar, but, more unusually, before the end of the Queen’s reign, he had become very familiar with the wider passion for rarities, which possessed his first important patron, Sir Walter Cope, whose collecting was markedly less discriminatory, and less directed, than that later to be characteristic of Charles I. Cope’s collection embraced natural and ethnographic curiosities and as well as art and antiquities, and interested the likes of Thomas Platter, a Basel-trained physician, who was taken to see it by another the physician, the celebrated botanist Matthias de Lobel (Lobelius) in 1599 (Williams 1937, 171–73), and the gardener, John Tradescant, whose own ‘Ark’ was to some extent inspired by it (MacGregor 1983, 18). Pory’s affiliation to Cope was so well known that John Donne thought of him as the obvious person

And what credibility should we give to the Scot who claimed familiarity with two kings? Only recently has the name of Archibald Rankin, having been overlooked by both the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ editions of the Dictionary of National Biography, been noticed by historians concerned with the Scots in Scandinavia and the Baltic in the early 17th century.5 It appears that Rankin had, indeed, ‘many Eight letters from Rankin to Axel Oxenstierna, written between 1617 and 1630, are extant in Riksarkivet, Stockholm. Rankin is also mentioned in three letters of Sir James Spens to Oxenstierna: 7/17 March 1617/18, RA, Oxenstiernska samlingen E 724 (3527); 10/20 March 1624/25, E 724 (3538); October 1627, E 724 (3586). ‘The Scotland, Scandinavia, and Northern Europe Biographical Database, 1580–1707’, Institute of Scottish Historical Research, University of St Andrews, also finds Rankin in: Roe to Gustav II Adolf, 9 March 1630, RA, Anglica 522; the same, 19 March, 1629/1630, RA, Oxenstiernska samlingen, E692. Rankin also corresponded with Johan Skytte, a Councillor of the Realm and diplomat. For Rankin in the secondary literature, see Tunberg (1935, 74–5); Droste 5

Brown (1994) and Brotton (2006) consider, inter alia, the formation of the collection, which, with MacGregor (1996) provide the best assessments since Millar (1977). 4 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Sinica 20/3 [SC2826] (the third fascicle of five); Sinica 27 [SC 2836]. Sinica 30 [SC2839]. All bear manuscript notes identifying the donor as John Pory. 3

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Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 years dependence’ on Gustav II Adolf, since first being retained on a salary of 500 riksdaler in 1617. In that year, Sir James Spens of Wormiston, a more senior Scottish diplomat, referred to him as a source of intelligence on Poland and Russia, and only recently ‘ex Polonia’. About this time, Rankin also became a member of household of the Prince of Wales, though as a ‘servant extraordinary’ rather than as a full-time attendant, allowing him to act as Charles’s accredited representative in the Baltic. It is evident that Pory already regarded Archibald Rankin as a valuable source prior to hearing the Munich story from him, as, in a newsletter to another client, Sir Thomas Puckering, written the previous autumn, he gave him the credit for providing a written account of the recent, sensational capture of a Spanish fleet by the Dutch; no doubt, the Battle of the Slaak (Birch 1848, 2: 132–35; Powell 1977, [microfiche] 171). It is entirely possible that that Pory’s acquaintance with Rankin was not recent, and that the paths of these two great travellers had crossed before in London. John Taylor, the ‘Water-poet’, seems to have met Rankin shortly before his departure for Danzig in the autumn of 1629, dedicating his Wit and Mirth (1629) to ‘the truly Loyall hearted, learned, well accomplished Gentleman, Master Archibold Rankin’, providing some clues to his personality in describing him as ‘a troue devoted friend to honest harmlesse mirth and laudable recreation’, though entreating him to read his book only ‘when your more serious affairs will permit’ (Taylor 1630, 2: 176–77).

Henry, and Anne of Denmark than Maximilian did from his predecessors: Ludwig X, Albrecht V, and Wilhelm V. Before the mid-point of the sixteenth century had been reached, the Bavarian ducal picture collection included not only works by northern masters, including Pieter Aertsen, Lucas van Leyden, Jan van Scorel, and Quentin Massys, but also works by Italian masters, including Perugino, Raphael, Parmigianino, Paris Bordone, Palma Vecchio, and Titian. Moreover, Maximilian had a personal enthusiasm for art, and pronounced tastes – especially for old German painting (Golberg 1980). This much could also be said for Charles, although his tastes were somewhat different. Maximilian, like his forebears, was a successful and demanding patron of artists, attracting to his court, Peter Candid, Friedrich Sustris, Adriaan de Vries, Hans Krumper, Christoph Angermair, and Georg Maximilian Petel. Maximilian began his own tapestry works in Munich in 1604, thereby pre-dating the Mortlake works by 15 years. He also had the wealth and the vision to enlarge his principal palace, the Residenz in Munich, which with its three extensive gardens had an impressive unity of conception unlike the agglomeration of buildings and courtyards that constituted the Palace of Whitehall, the exterior of which was described by the Jena-educated Justus Zinzerling, who visited London in 1610, as ‘not very magnificent’ (Rye 1865, 132). From Pory’s note, we also learn something of Charles I’s image as a collector at this date, as Rankin obviously wanted the pictures and statues not for himself but for Charles, his other master. At the moment he seized his opportunity with Gustav Adolf, Rankin would have known at least that Charles’s collections had been formed largely through the absorption of other collections, or parts of collections. Indeed, Charles’s collecting would have been all the more comprehensible to a man of affairs such as Rankin for seeming an essentially assertive practice rather than a private one. When individual rarities or works of art are bought and sold, or bartered, it testifies to mutually beneficial exchange; when whole collections are swallowed up, it testifies to strength and weakness. Charles and his subjects concurred in the view that Britain was in the ascendant, and once-great European states in decline (McGinnis and Williamson 2002). It encouraged the collecting aristocracy of the Early Stuart court, joined by Charles while still Prince of Wales, to set about acquiring what they could of Europe’s most treasured art and antiquities with an ebullience tending to arrogance. They had initiated a process that would be interrupted by the Civil War, and then continue for the best part of two centuries, which involved nothing less than a relocation of much of the most cherished artefacts to have been produced by European civilization; a change of custodianship which indicated a real shift of power, wealth, and, supposedly, virtue (see Chaney 2000; 2003).

Pory’s compressed report of Rankin’s scheme is packed with perceptions about princely collecting at the time – of perceptions held, to be more precise (accurate dating with regard to the development of Charles’s collections is essential), about four years prior to the meeting, i.e., c.1628. If we skip over Rankin’s premise that Gustav Adolf would become ‘Master of Bavaria’ (envisaged, remarkably, before the Swedes had even entered the Thirty Years’ War), we learn that this Scottish agent (not, as far as we know, someone who had previously been involved in the procurement of art or rarities), whose area of expertise was the Baltic, knew of the ‘pictures and statues’ in Maximilian I’s palace in far-away Munich. We also learn that Gustav Adolf was similarly aware of this, if only by Rankin’s information. Even if the Swedish king had known of these art treasures before, Rankin’s expression of interest could only have raised their significance in his mind. In 1629, the court of Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, outshone that of Charles I, King of England (Albrecht 1998). Maximilian had ruled longer than Charles, and had always perceived collections as important testaments to princely virtues, having surrounded himself with art even as a youth. The Wittelsbach collections had been built up with clear-sightedness and persistence for more than a century, which could not be said for those of Charles, who inherited rather less from the Tudor monarchs, Prince

Assuming both Rankin’s and Pory’s memories to be fairly accurate – as intelligencers, their reputations and livelihoods depended on it – ‘Four years agon’ dates Gustav II Adolf’s promise towards the end of the latest in a

(2006, 87); Murdoch (2006, 258–9, 262, 264, 272–6).

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 1. Willem van de Passe, James, 3rd Marquess of Hamilton, embarking for Germany, copper engraving, © National Portrait Gallery, London

Figure 2. Michiel Jansz. van Miereveldt  (possibly after), Sir Henry Vane the Elder, oil on panel, © National Portrait Gallery, London

series of wars between Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1625–29). Rankin’s comings-and-goings during this period are not entirely clear. In order, therefore, to narrow down the possibilities for the occasion of his royal conversation, it is necessary to follow Gustav II Adolf’s better-recorded movements. After spending the winter of 1626–27 in Sweden, the King resumed his Prussian campaign landing at Pillau (Baltijsk) in May 1627. Securing control of the coast of Prussia, and isolating and, ideally, seizing the Hanseatic port of Danzig (Gdansk), were his military objectives. In the following August, in the battle of Dirschau (Tczew), Gustav II Adolf suffered a wound, and spent the next few months recuperating. Rankin’s audience probably took place after this hectic and uncertain period. Indeed, the point after which it would have been no longer absurd to suggest that the King might one day find himself in possession of Munich only arrived in July 1628. It was in that month, in the adjacent, larger conflict to the west, that the Stralsunders, with some Swedish assistance, successfully defended their port from Imperial attack. It was enough to secure for Sweden a point of entry into Germany and the Thirty Years’ War. Gustav Adolf was to disembark his army at Stralsund two years later (Roberts 1967, 82–83).

camp near Marienburg in late August 1629 to assist in the negotiations, lingered for the signing. Roe was a long-term accomplice in the Stuart court’s great collecting venture. He had provided eight tons of ‘Indian speckled wood’, obtained on his 1610–11 exploration of the Wiapoco and Amazon rivers, for the construction of Prince Henry’s gallery and library in St James’s, and cabinet room in Richmond Palace (Wilks 1988, 152); later, in consort with William Petty, the indefatigable agent of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, he had sought pieces of antique sculpture in Greece, Constantinople, and Asia Minor, for Arundel and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, also sending Arundel ‘divers rare peeces of white corall, the gatherings of a dead English Gentleman...for fountaines (your Lordship’s curiosity being unlimited)’ (Howarth 1985, 87–96); Hervey 1921, 265–80). Roe had also procured eastern manuscripts, which he subsequently gave to the Bodleian Library (Roe MSS; Hervey 1921, 275), and to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, he had sent a catalogue of rare coins that he had purchased in Constantinople, while an accompanying letter speculates on ‘This curiositye of antiquitys’ (Richardson 1740, 583–4). There was no better person to perceive the beneficial mixture of collecting and diplomacy, and to approve Archibald Rankin’s bold gambit.

Gustav Adolf left Prussia for Sweden a few days before the Truce of Altmark on 26 October 1629, while England’s ambassador, the exceptionally travelled and cultivated Sir Thomas Roe, who had arrived at the Swedish army’s great

Though Rankin was not among the handful of Scottish gentlemen attending Roe at Altmark, who included Charles I’s resident agent in Poland, Francis Gordon, he would soon meet and confer with Roe in Danzig. After the treaty 42

Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632

Figure 4. Matthäus Merian the Elder, Bird’s-eye view of Munich, showing (upper-left) the Residenz and gardens, copper etching

was signed, Roe retreated from a countryside ravaged by plague and famine only to find ‘miserable Elbing worse than the Campe’. Then, on 28 September/8 October, he left Elbing, and travelled unhindered to Danzig, which had succeeded in holding out against the Swedes. There, he wrote to the Secretary of State, Lord Dorchester: ‘By Mr Rankin I neyther received his Maties nor your Lordship’s commands, nor credit nor comfort’ (Gardiner 1875, 52). Dorchester, formerly Sir Dudley Carleton, had performed a no less a valuable role than Roe, while serving as an ambassador in the 1610s and 1620s, in seeking out art and antiquities for the English court (see Hill 1999; 2003; Hill and Lockyer 2003). Rankin had evidently left London more recently than Roe, conceivably in early October, and had probably arrived in Danzig by sea. Roe was sure in his own mind that Gustav Adolf should now be encouraged to take on the Imperialists in Germany, and to assist in the great cause of English foreign policy since 1622; the restitution of the Palatinate to Charles I’s brother-inlaw, Frederick V. Heidelberg had fallen to the forces of the Catholic League financed by Maximilian of Bavaria, and, therefore, the suggestion that Charles might somehow come into possession of the distant art treasures of Munich should be regarded in the context of an existing grievance. Rankin’s advocacy was clearly the same as Roe’s, as his

vision of the seizure of Maximilian’s collections depended on Gustav Adolf entering the Thirty Years’ War and sweeping all before him. We might pause at this critical juncture to consider what kind of collector Charles I would have appeared to be to such an occasional visitor to the court as Rankin. On turning the pages of Abraham van der Doort’s ‘Catalogue’, compiled in the late 1630s, one’s eye is drawn to the notes of various donors of single works: ‘Given to your Matie by my lord Denby’; ‘Given to ye king by the Lord of Newcastle’; ‘bought of Sir James Paumer’, and so on. First impressions are of a collection built up piecemeal; indeed, of a collaborative effort by an enthusiastic court circle. To some extent this is true, but donations by Whitehall courtiers were only ever supplemental. More patient reading confirms that by the time of Rubens’ visit to the English court (March 1629–June 1630) Charles’s collections were already considerable, having been achieved in just a few major coups. Rubens declared, ‘that when it comes to fine pictures by the hands of first-class masters, I have never seen such a large number in one place as in the royal palace and in the gallery of the late Duke of Buckingham’ (Magurn 1955, 321–22). Renaissance and early-modern princes would often arrive at a point 43

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 3. Matthäus Merian the Elder, The Swedish King Gustav Adolf receives the town keys of Munich, 17 May, 1632, copper etching, © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek the Netherlands at least two major collections of antique coins and gems (Wilks, 2007, 207, note 29). It was the success of the Venetian purchase, facilitated largely by the merchant, Daniel Nys and the banker Philip Burlamachi, which encouraged Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, to ask Nys to perform a similar feat for him (Wilks 1989). By the end of 1615, his late brother’s gallery at St James’s and the fallen favourite Somerset’s makeshift gallery in the bowling alley at Whitehall was already beginning to stimulate Charles’s taste for Venetian art, which primed him to appreciate the works of Rubens and Van Dyck.

(typically, either on their succession or in anticipation of a dynastic marriage) when a magnificent court became an urgent requirement for them. It would confirm their status, and allow them to be judged against other princes according to a rule of ostentation, or (a more subtle test) a rule of taste. A new princely collection, therefore, tended to grow by the wagonload, and sometimes by the shipload. Charles’s own collections were built upon the foundations of his elder brother’s, though only a few proofs of Prince Henry’s prior ownership are to be gleaned from contemporary records of Charles’s collections, or from brand marks on extant picture frames (Wilks 2005, 149–72). More valuable, possibly, to Charles than the actual objects left by Prince Henry upon his much-bewailed early death in November 1612 was the legacy of how to obtain them. Henry and his advisers had shown a newfound confidence in making their desires known to foreign diplomats, and in entering the European art market directly to buy a large group of paintings assembled in Venice. This confidence stemmed in part from a more sophisticated understanding of art and its uses than that which had been possessed by all but a very few Elizabethans. Henry’s well travelled and sophisticated advisers were capable, as they demonstrated, of specifically requesting, as early as 1611, a model of the Laurentian Library stairs, describing from memory a painting in Siena by Beccafumi, and extracting from

The first of Charles’s own coups was, arguably, the purchase in 1623 of seven of Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles Cartoons, retrieved from relative obscurity in Genoa – his advisers having been tipped off, possibly by Rubens (Shearman 1972, 145–47). It was intended that they should once more serve their original function as tapestry designs, but it appears that Charles also valued them as original works by the hand of a great master. At the Mortlake tapestry works, they were spared the rigours of the manufacturing process, as working copies were made from them by Francis Cleyn, who, with his sons, painted at least two other sets for display, which supports a view that the original Cartoons were esteemed as works of art in their own right. Some repair and restoration work was done to the cartoons during their ownership by Charles I, possibly 44

Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632

Figure 5. Unknown sculptor, Pietas – the bust brought out of Germany by Sir Henry Vane, bronze, © The Royal Collection with a view to framing and hanging them; something that would only be achieved in the reign of Charles II.6

quality, the English prince would pay excessively to obtain that which he so admired (Redworth 2003, 113).

Charles gave instructions for the purchase of the Cartoons while he was in Madrid. How his conception of princely magnificence was influenced by his visit to the Spanish court while still Prince of Wales; how his taste for art was refined there, and how he came away with a haul of artworks including Titian’s Pardo Venus and Charles V with a Hound, Veronese’s Mars and Venus, Giambologna’s marble sculpture, Samson Slaying the Philistine, and several antique marble busts, all of which set an extremely high standard for the future enlargement of his collection, is now a familiar tale (Scroth 1997; Brown and Elliott 2002; Redworth 2003, 112–13; Brotton 2006, 9–26). For present purposes it is sufficient to draw attention to the rapidity with which Charles’s acquired his reputation as an insatiable collector. In the opinion of the courtier-dramatist Lope de Vega, who was accustomed to being surrounded at the Spanish court by an abundance of works of supreme

A pause in the series of prodigious bounds by which Charles’s collections grew was occasioned by his accession to the throne in 1625, and his wedding of Henrietta Maria soon afterwards. But these two events only served to increase Charles’s desire for courtly splendour. His collecting resumed spectacularly with the acquisition of the many paintings and statues of the Mantuan Collection, clinched in two great deals made with the declining ducal house of Gonzaga in 1626 and 1628 (Sainsbury 1859, 320–27; Spink 1959, 242–52). Here, it is perhaps sufficient to note Daniel Nys’s reappearance at the centre of these transactions to make the point that the English royal collection continued to grow in the manner established by Prince Henry. Neither Archibald Rankin nor anyone outside Charles’s inner circle of court advisers could have known that once the last shiploads of Mantuan paintings and statues had arrived from Venice in the autumn of 1630 (Brown et al. 1864–1947, 4: 419), the pace of Charles’s collecting would

King (1989) does not refer to Shearman (1972), and states that the original Cartoons were hung among other works of art at Whitehall’ (313–14). 6

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor slow. When seeking works of art, Charles always appears to have had an idea of where he was going to put them. As a young king, and even while still Prince of Wales, he lost no time in furnishing and adorning his palaces to a standard that accorded with his own conception of his dignity, and which would reveal his sophisticated taste. But though Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House might have been conceived as the precursor of a great rebuilding of Whitehall – architectural drawings for it were still being made after 1638 (Harris et al. 1973, 146–47) – Charles never had sufficient funds to attempt more than a few interior alterations. Acquisition and disposition as aspects of Charles’s collecting, therefore, need to be considered together. Rankin’s extraction from Gustav Adolf of the promise of the Munich pictures and statues, however, came at a point when Charles’s thirst for art seemed unquenchable – when it seemed as if he might continue devouring one princely collection after another. Yet it also happened to coincide with a political turning point: Charles’s dissolution of Parliament in 1629, and the beginning of eleven years of personal rule without the support of parliamentary subsidies or loans. The 1630s proved to be years of less dramatic growth; a fact not easy to perceive through the glare of Van Dyck’s Baroque makeover of the English court (Millar 1972; Barnes et al. 2003). This was to be Charles I’s most successful decade of patronage, in which several highly capable artists besides Van Dyck: the history painter, Orazio Gentileschi (Finaldi 1999; Wood 2000–2001), and the sculptors, Hubert le Sueur, Francesco Fanelli, and François Dieussart, produced new work for the court. Otherwise, for Charles’s collections it was a decade of significant curating, characterized by re-ordering and re-hanging, some discarding, some augmentation through single or small donations, a few one-for-one exchanges, and meticulous cataloguing. The only significant bulk purchase took place in January 1638, when 23 Italian paintings were bought from William Frizell, a former agent of the Earl of Arundel (Reade 1947; Millar 1960, xix, xx, 181–83, 192–93).

assembled in Venice by the painter-dealer, Nicolas Régnier (McEvansoneya 1992; Shakeshaft 1986). Hamilton replaced the Duke of Buckingham as the greatest spender of the Whitehall circle, which was not unconnected to his ambition to succeed the late favourite more generally. Military historians also know Hamilton, if only for being a repeatedly unlucky general, and his first experience of war in Germany has been considered too insignificant by historians of the Thirty Years’ War to receive much attention, and from some of them (Wedgwood 1938; Parker 1997) it has received none. It was in Germany, however, that his collecting and soldiering worlds for a time merged, with notable results. On his return to England in the autumn of 1632, Hamilton presented to Charles seven small pictures later recorded in the Chair Room at Whitehall, each with a note that they had been ‘Brought from Germanie by my Lord Marquess Hambleton and given to the King’, with slight variants to wording and spelling; these included: a Portia on copper in a black ebony frame, attributed to Guido Reni (Millar 1960, 62); an Ascension of the Virgin, with Apostles on copper, in a black, ‘waved’ ebony frame, attributed to Jan Snellinck I (Millar 1960, 65); a Cabinet Room, on panel, attributed to Frans Francken II (Millar 1960, 65); Erasmus of Rotterdam, in a black, ‘waved’ ebony frame, attributed to Georg Pencz of Nuremberg (after Holbein) (Millar 1960, 66, 244); the Three Kings attributed to Otto van Veen; (Millar 1960, 66); an unattributed St Jerome (Millar 1960, 67); and a Bacchanalian Feast (depicting 22 children and a goat) given an attribution to either Michiel van Coxcie or Cornelis van Cleve (Millar 1960, 70). In the new Cabinet Room at Whitehall were two more pictures associated with Hamilton, both by Lucas Cranach the Elder: a Martin Luther (Millar 1960, 86, 210); and an Adam and Eve (Millar 1960, 90, 211). As with the Chair Room pictures, the catalogue reveals that the Adam and Eve had been ‘brought out of Germany’ by Hamilton, but for the Martin Luther the information is slightly different: that the king had bought it at Greenwich ‘by my Lo: Marquess of Hambletons means’. We may only guess at the circumstances of this purchase: whereas Hamilton was near the apex of a structure of patronage within which relationships were recognized and reinforced by giftgiving, this would not apply to Scottish mercenary officers, several of whom accompanied Hamilton on his journey home, bringing, no doubt, their personal booty; perhaps Hamilton presented one of his new military friends – with a picture to sell – to the King. Though the Martin Luther stands apart, both for not having been given by Hamilton and for being an unlikely subject to have emerged from the gallery of the devoutly Catholic Maximilian, it was clearly still regarded as part of the German haul of 1632.

Archibald Rankin reappears in the historical record in a letter of 3 December 1630, in which Gustav Adolf, having recently entered the Thirty Years’ War,7 congratulates, somewhat prematurely, James, 3rd Marquis of Hamilton, on his success in raising a small army to assist him (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 70 [no. 18]). Gustav Adolf, in Stettin (Szczecin), revealed that had been informed of this by Rankin (graced with a knighthood in the letter), in whom Hamilton was advised to place his trust while terms were arranged. Hamilton, a distant cousin of Charles, is familiar to historians of collections as a member of the Whitehall circle of connoisseurs – he occupied a suite of twenty rooms in the palace – and as the purchaser in the late 1630s of the prized Venetian collections of Bartolomeo della Nave and Michiel Priuli, as well as a group of pictures

A precedent for the extraction of works of art from Germany during the period, 1629–1632, had been set in a modest way by the Scottish diplomatist, Robert Anstruther, who returned from the Diet which he attended at Regensburg in 1630 (or possibly that which he attended at Vienna the following year) with two pictures: one, almost certainly a

Hugh Trevor-Roper’s elegant essay (1970) remains the best survey in English of the issue of plunder in the Thirty Years’ War; for a perceptive overview, see also Tauss (1998); for the Swedes’ war booty, Walde (1916) is still unsurpassed; a revised, English translation by Elsa Meyland-Smith is in preparation. 7

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Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 16th-century German work, being of a family of four; the younger son wearing armour (Millar 1960, 62, 223); the other, being a Flaying of St Bartholomew, which Millar assumes to be a version of a design attributed to Agostino Carracci (Millar 1960, 67, 224). Both of these works were hung in the Chair Room. The concentration of Hamilton’s gifts (together with those of Vane and Anstruther) in the Chair Room and the Cabinet Room at Whitehall indicate that they were not only received as a group but also perceived as a group. These rooms were, thereafter, redolent with this period of engagement with Germany. The Cabinet Room, however, to which much of the old cabinet collection of St James’s Palace was transferred, may not have been ready to accept rarities from Germany immediately; indeed, the joiner who fitted cupboards, cases, shelves, and shutters for the windows, was not paid for his work until 1633 (Thurley 1999, 93). Van der Doort does not reveal where in Germany the Hamilton group came from, though the argument presented here is that they came from Munich. One further work donated by Hamilton – a clinching piece of evidence – remains to be introduced into this discussion.

attention – should not be to view it as a country where rarities were easily obtained after a decade of war. There were no rich pickings to be had from a region once it had been traversed or occupied by hostile forces, which had been the experience of much of Germany by 1631. The invasion of Bavaria in May 1632 caused a sensation throughout Europe as it had remained unscathed for the first dozen years of the War, and had seemed inviolate. Indeed, to follow both Hamilton’s and Vane’s movements in Germany preceding the Crossing of the Lech is to discover what few opportunities there had earlier been for either to act in that role. Their subsequent encounter with plentiful art treasures in Munich, some of which proved attainable, stands in sharp contrast to everything they had encountered hitherto. In early August 1631, having landed at Wolgast in Pomerania with 6200 English and Scottish troops, Hamilton hastened to meet Gustav Adolf, who was at Werben on the Elbe with the main Swedish army. He wished to leave the King in no doubt of his own royal blood and high status, and had arrived in Germany with forty gentlemen volunteers and pages, and a personal bodyguard of two hundred men, all well mounted and expensively attired (Grant 1851, 91). From Gustav Adolf, however, he received instructions to keep his force separate, and use it to hold the Oder valley as far as Silesia (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 69–72). During the months that followed, during which Hamilton’s soldiers occupied small towns in Lusatia, their number was greatly reduced by plague and general privation. In mid-October, Hamilton, then at Kustrin (Kostrzyn), was requested to assist in the investing of Magdeburg, notoriously sacked and burned by the Imperialists some months before, and still occupied by them (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 74).8 While the remnants of his army – a mere 1200 men – marched across Brandenburg to Magdeburg, Hamilton embarked on a much longer journey south, having been summoned to Würzburg, where the Swedish army had been resting since capturing it on 18 October.

Although Rankin was caught out by the speed of events in the spring of 1632, and hurried to Whitehall seeking to remind, first, one king, then, another king of an old promise, when the Protestant host descended on Munich it contained not only kings, dukes, and marshals, but also two very senior members of the household of Charles I: its Master of the Horse (Hamilton) and its Comptroller, Sir Henry Vane, who had been sent to negotiate a treaty with Gustav Adolf to regain the Palatinate for Frederick on reasonable terms. These two acted independently of each other while in Germany; they had separate entourages, and met only occasionally, though they appear to have been of one mind in dealing with Gustav Adolf. When diplomacy eventually failed, both, interestingly, sought rarities, reluctant to return entirely empty-handed, and, perhaps, hoping they would assuage a king denied his political objective. A formal alliance could have made all the difference to British designs upon the art treasures of Maximilian of Bavaria. For, according to Grotius (whose work Gustav Adolf held in high regard (Roberts 1967, p. 84; Piirimäe 2002), expounding on the theme: ‘Thus booty may be granted to allies’ (De iure belli ac pacis, 3: 6, xxiii) – an ally could lawfully partake in the victor’s plunder. Grotius’s treatise had quickly achieved international authority, if not compliance, on the issue of plunder after its first publication in 1625, not least by the use of classical precedent, including Cicero’s ‘Verrines’, which, oddly, had not previously influenced the status of booty to any great extent (Miles 2008, 287–88). In the absence of a treaty of alliance, Rankin’s cherished concession could be forgotten, while Vane and Hamilton were left to compete with others amid one of the great dismemberments of a Renaissance collection north of the Alps.

Vane arrived at Würzburg from England on 5 November; he had travelled south from Hamburg, a journey of which Sir John Suckling, one of his entourage, wrote: ‘the places we are come to, have afforded rather bloode than Inke: and of all things, sheets have been the hardest to come by, specially those of Paper’(Clayton 1971, 119). This impression of unending devastation would be sustained in the letters of the various Englishmen and Scotsmen who travelled through Germany in the 1630s. As it was difficult to find even a sheet of paper between Hamburg and Würzburg, the likelihood of encountering objects of virtue seems remote in the extreme. Even if Vane or Hamilton had been prepared to snap up any available rarities for their king when they arrived at Marienberg, the fortress of Würzburg, where, in Gindely’s words, ‘the most valuable treasures from far and near had been placed ... in The ODNB article for Hamilton asserts misleadingly that, from this point, ‘his involvement in the Thirty Years’ War was at an end.’ For a consideration of Hamilton’s ongoing participation, though without any mention of his presence in Munich, see Rubinstein (1976, 24–37).

To notice Germany as another source of rarities for Charles I’s collections – a modest correction to the impression that only the art of Italy and Spain drew Whitehall’s

8

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor fancied security’, they would have found that they were too late (Gindely 1885, 2: 91). Suckling wrote to Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, that ‘having overcome a journey dangerous and troublesome both in respect wee have past through onely the ruines of countryes and also that partyes of horse and foot were also abroad’, they had reached Würzburg ‘where the Souldier found such pillage, that it is ordinary for the lower ranke of them now to loose 300 Duckats upon a drums head’ (Clayton 1971, 119). Suckling makes no mention to Middlesex of the availability of any rarities which, if there had been any, he surely would have, as Middlesex, despite losing high office, continued to live in style, and may be regarded as another of the connoisseurs of the Caroline court, though this has never been recognized.9 Although Arundel, returning from Prague in 1636, was able to tell of ‘the Picture of a Madonna by AD [Albrecht Dürer] Wch the Bishoppe of Wirtzberge gave me last week as I passed by that way...it is more worth then all the toyes I have gotten in Germanye’(Hervey 1921, 394; Springell 1963, 131–32; Howarth 1985, 138–39) this friendly bishop, Franz von Hatzfeld (a brother of the Imperialist general, Melchior von Hatzfeld), had only been appointed a month before being made to flee by the approach of the Swedes, and it is therefore probable that his Madonna arrived with him on his return to Würzburg in 1634. The ‘toyes’, which Arundel had been reduced to buying in the absence of major pieces of art, included 14 rare deer antlers, two dishes, two salt-cellars, and the copperplate of Dürer’s Pirckheimer (Ashmolean 1980, no. 40); all obtained from Hans Hieronymus Imhoff in Nuremberg (Springell 1963, 107). It might also be objected that forty-six Latin manuscripts from the cathedral in Würzburg, including an 8th -century manuscript of St. Augustine’s De trinitate, came into the possession of Archbishop Laud, which later, in May 1635, he donated to the Bodleian Library (Madan 1953, nos. 511 &tc). However, as the note accompanying the benefaction makes clear, these had not been made available to any collector or collector’s agent immediately after the storming, but had been carried around Germany in the baggage of the army for some time before being relinquished by their unidentified taker (Macray 1868, 61).

out for Frankfurt-am-Main, into which city Gustav Adolf had marched his army on 27 November (Wedgwood 1938, 305). Of this journey, Suckling wrote: ‘besides the miserye of liing in straw foure nights together, we had continual Alarums’ (Clayton 1971, 123). Frankfurt, a Free City, claimed a kind of neutrality, and was never in danger of being sacked by Gustav Adolf, but it was still required to make a huge financial contribution to his campaign. Before the war, Frankfurt was famed throughout Europe for its twice-yearly Mart, when there was not only a great trade in books but also a trade in other luxury items. In better days, English travellers and traders had been drawn to the Marts: Sir Henry Wotton in 1603; Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (and Thomas Coryate, who spotted him) in 1608; William Cecil, Viscount Cranborne (later 2nd Earl of Salisbury) visited the city in 1611, but missed the Marts. The war affected the commercial life and general prosperity of Frankfurt greatly, and though Grand Tourists had ceased to come, the flow of English and Scots emissaries was sufficient for two prominent residents, Johannes Porss and Johannes Geissel, to compete to be their principal contact. Arundel, who passed through the city four years later, observed, ‘I lay in the house of Mr. John Pors, a substantial burgess of that town, and of very good credit there, where Mr Comptroller [Vane] and Sir Robert Anstruther have formerly lain’ (Paisey 2002, 165–66). Arundel contented himself during his visit with viewing the city’s principal buildings, and even as early as the autumn of 1631, when Vane and his entourage arrived, the time may have already passed when an English or Scottish lord could find objects worthy of a prince’s cabinet. Vane’s embassy saw the year out in Frankfurt, Suckling reporting, ‘There is nothing either fair or good in this part of the world’ (Clayton 1971, 126). Hamilton, meanwhile, had a yet more miserable experience outside Magdeburg, refusing repeated entreaties from the Swedish general, Johan Banér, to retire his much weakened force to winter quarters in Halberstadt (DouglasHamilton 1887, 75 [no. 43]), and informing him: ‘I am fully resolved not to budge from itt, being both myself, offisars and remnant soiours most willing and I hoope as abll to indoure whatsoeuer extremati of could or what eals may befall’ (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 75 [no. 44]). At Christmas, he tried to bluff the garrison into surrendering, but without success (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 75 [nos. 45, 46]). In early January 1632, a relieving force of Imperial troops massed nearby, giving Hamilton hope that he might gain some honour in battle. Within two weeks, however, the Imperialists had extracted their men and marched away. Magdeburg had already been pillaged and burned (20–21 May, 1631), and most of its population massacred by the Catholic armies of Tilly and Pappenheim; now, as the garrison departed, it was set on fire again (Wedgwood 1944, 329). Hamilton’s men briefly occupied this charred and ransacked city before at last leaving to seek billets in and around Halberstadt (itself occupied by defeated Catholic troops retreating from Breitenfeld as recently as the previous September). Neither the Oder Valley or the ravaged archbishopric of Magdeburg, during the months

Vane had audiences with the King of Sweden on 7 and 8 November, and on the latter day Suckling supped with Hamilton (Clayton 1971, 119–121). The next day, before marching away the bulk of his army, Gustav Adolf signed a formal letter appointing Hamilton an umpire to the negotiations that were to be continued by Vane and his own representative, Gustav Horn (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 74 [nos. 39, 41]). Hamilton remained at Würzburg until 19 November, when he left to rejoin his troops before Magdeburg (Berry 1960, 72). Some days later, Vane set Suckling, in honouring Middlesex with his own ‘Character’, describes his deprivation of office as ‘an odd thing, as if you should see Van Dike with all his fine colours and Pensills about him, his Frame, and right Light, and every thing in order, and yet his hands tyed behind him’ (Clayton 1971, 121). One of the copied sets of the Raphael Cartoons (now at Knole) was owned by Middlesex, and displayed in Copt Hall, his house in Essex; a traditional attribution to Daniel Mytens is unconvincing, and it is probably the work of the Cleyns. 9

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Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 that Hamilton had been there, appear to have afforded the slightest opportunity for the acquisition of rarities.

Astley, carrying this letter with its enthusiastic postscript, set out for Germany on 2 May, accompanied by Henry Vane the Younger, intending to join his father.10

Hamilton now journeyed west once more, to Frankfurt-amMain, to attend a great conference that included delegations from the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony. He reached Frankfurt on 11 February: a day after the arrival of Frederick V and William, Lord Craven. The following day, at nearby Höchst, Gustav Adolf lavishly entertained all the Protestant dignitaries. It appears that Hamilton thereafter accompanied Gustav Adolf, at least part of the way, on a short campaign to take Kreuznach (16–23 February), as he wrote on 19 February from previously-taken and plundered Mainz (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 79 [no. 56]). He resumed attendance on Gustav Adolf on 1 March, after the King’s return to Frankfurt. On 18 March, an officer and kinsman, John Hamilton, wrote to the Marquis about the poor condition of his soldiers in Halberstadt (DouglasHamilton 1887, 76 [no. 47]), and early in the following month Hamilton ordered that what was left of his army be made into two regiments, whereupon these were absorbed into Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar’s army (Burnet 1677, 21). He then dismissed his redundant officers, expecting them to return home, and informed Charles: ‘Thereafter, i will gooe to the armi [of Gustav Adolf] wher I shall attend with all deu devotions your Majesties commmands.’ (DouglasHamilton 1887, 79–80 [no. 57]). As the opportunity of attaining military glory receded for Hamilton, opportunities for obtaining rarities loomed.

No doubt taking satisfaction at entering the territory of the prince who had long since dispossessed him, Frederick V accompanied the Swedish army into Bavaria. It has not been possible to ascertain whether the devoted Lord Craven was in attendance; he had been wounded in the taking of Kreuznach (Hinds 1919, 793), but not so severely that he could avoid a jest from Gustav Adolf, or be unable to co-sign the terms of surrender. It may well be, therefore, that the owner of Combe Abbey should be added to the list of British courtiers who saw the glories of the Residenz in 1632. In a letter to his wife, Elizabeth (Charles I’s sister), begun in Freising and finished in Munich, Frederick mentioned resting for a day at the hilltop castle of the bishop of Freising, which he described as not particularly beautiful, though the deer came right up to it, and the view from it was most pleasant (Bromley 1787, 34–41). He could see Munich two leagues away, and, further in the distance, the snow-capped mountains of the Tyrol. He continued, ‘There is an extremely beautiful church [the Mariendom], but the Duke of Bavaria’s men have carried away the best pictures’ (Bromley 1787, 35– 36). This might be interpreted as the regretful comment of one already primed for plunder, but, as his subsequent attitude towards the available rarities in Munich reveals, Frederick must only have regretted not being able to view these pictures. Frederick also mentions that Hamilton had caught up with him, and that Vane was waiting to come forward from Augsburg.

By this time, the taking of Munich had become a shortterm objective of Gustav Adolf in a new phase of the war in which Maximilian’s claims of neutrality were cast aside. Gustav Adolf had marched from Frankfurt in pursuit of the army of the Catholic League, which Count Tilly then took south, drawing the Swedes and their allies towards Bavaria. Hamilton probably missed the rapturous reception of the Protestant army in Nuremberg, and possibly its subsequent crossing of the Danube at Donauwörth on 7 April. From this point, the capture of Munich seemed inevitable and imminent. Sir John Suckling left for England at about this time (probably with Hamilton’s officers) and subsequently had audiences with the King, who at first did not seem to realize the significance of the taking of Donauwörth, which had laid open Bavaria (Bruce et al. 1858–1897, 5: 322– 23). Sir Jacob Astley, who had been in Hamilton’s retinue, had returned earlier, in late March, bringing letters from the Marquis (Bruce, J. et al. 1858–1897, 5: 293). Charles’s reply, in a letter dated 30 April, reveals that Hamilton must have mentioned his intention to share imminently in the spoils of Munich on Charles’s behalf:

The Swedish army marched on Munich on 6/16 May, and before the day was out, was met by commissioners desperate to prevent a sack of their city, offering to yield it on terms. On the following day, Gustav Adolf encamped most of his army outside the walls, and entered Munich with only a single brigade composed mainly of Scots: Hepburn’s regiment took control of the marketplace and the city gates, while two regiments led by lieutenant-colonels Monro and Musten, set up camp in the Great Court of the palace. There, for three weeks, Monro remained in charge of palace security; his first duty being to protect the two kings: Gustav Adolf and Frederick of Bohemia, who took chambers therein. Gustav Adolf, however, did not remain in the Residenz, or indeed, in Munich for the whole period of the Swedish occupation, probably leaving on 27 May. Before he left, however, on 19 May – ‘on a sudden’, according to Monro – he imposed a tax on the citizens in return for sparing them from the pillaging they had feared from the first (Monro 1999, 256). Gustav Adolf’s mood seems to have changed, and his magnanimity to have disappeared. Pory soon received this news, reporting

I hope shortly you will be in a possibility to perform your promise concerning Pictures and Statues at Muneken, therefore now in earnest do not forget it. (Burnet 1677, 22)

This date, and that of the letter he carried, probably follows the Julian Calendar, which was ten days behind the Gregorian Calendar, then in use in Germany. Astley and the younger Vane did not sail until 6 May, see H. Cogan to Vane, 11 May 1632 (Bruce et al. 1858–1897, 5: 328–29). No matter which calendar was being used by these correspondents, Charles’s encouragement must have been received too late by Hamilton, though, in the event, it was not needed. 10

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor accurately that the citizens, primarily concerned for their own homes and businesses, had ‘covenanted to ransome themselves (not the Dukes palace, nor Jesuits Colledge) from being pillaged at 300 thousand Rixe dollars’ (Powell 1977, 274). Although the city was desperate to placate Gustav Adolf, only 90,000 thalers could be collected, whereupon, the King, still hoping to extract more, took 44 hostages. Though Gustav Adolf was urged by some of those around him to burn the Residenz, he spared it, but its exclusion from the covenant with the city allowed anything taken from it to be considered Betalningen, i.e., the reckoning specifically with Maximilian.

When Gustavus entered the town, many of his principal officers persuaded him to plunder this palace, appertaining to the great formentor of all disturbances, and commit it to the flames; to which his answer was, ‘My good friends, let us not imitate our ancestors of confusion, the Goths and Vandals, who, by destroying everything that belonged to the fine arts, have delivered to posterity their barbarity and want of taste, as a sort of proverb and by-word of contempt’ (Harte 1759, 2: 170). Here, Harte embellishes his acknowledged source, Le Vassor (1751, 7: 201–204), though without altering the substance, and draws on the same to portray Frederick in a similarly favourable light:

The Swedish occupation of Munich was inevitably mythologized; the attitudes and actions of Gustav Adolf and his generals, of Frederick V of the Palatinate, and of the Weimar dukes, being subjected to the attentions of Protestant apologists. By the mid-eighteenth century, a tradition was well established that Munich was the great city that was captured but not plundered, in obvious contrast with Magdeburg and Heidelberg. Schiller gave an impression that there was barely anything left to take from the palace, and that Gustav Adolf paced through empty galleries and chambers, having only the architecture to admire:

And here (whatever some authors may assert to the contrary), it appears from the least disputable authorities, that the elector Palatin discovered a very manly and Christian spirit; for though his Bavarian kinsman had plundered and depopulated all his dominions, stormed Heidelberg, ransacked the palace, and transported the famous library to Rome, he discovered no joy upon contemplating the reverse of fortune, nor touched a single cabinet, bronze or picture (Harte 1759, 2: 171).

The King found in Munich only a forsaken palace, for the Elector’s treasures had been transported to Werfen. The magnificence of the building astonished him; and he asked the guide who showed the apartments who was the architect. ‘no other’, replied he, ‘than the elector himself.’ – ‘I wish, ‘ said the King, ‘I had this architect to send to Stockholm.’ ‘That’, he was answered, ‘the architect will take care to prevent.’(Schiller 1860, 192).

Yet Frederick’s reported aloofness is confirmed by his own letter to Elizabeth, concluded on the day of Gustav Adolf’s entry into Munich, which also, crucially, brings Hamilton into prominence: I came this morning with the King to the beautiful house of my good cousin. The Marquis of Hamilton admires it, saying he never saw anything more beautiful. He has got the best, but there are still many beautiful things, but which cannot be got easily: even if this were not so, 121 [Frederick’s own code number] would have nothing of it. (Bromley 1787, 40)

Walter Harte, at least, made some distinction between the different treatments meted out to the galleries and cabinet rooms, though not entirely accurately: Maximilian, the then elector, had erected a magnificent palace adorned with pictures, which proceeded from the hands of the greatest Flemish and Italian masters. Gustavus removed not a single piece, which is more than can be said for some succeeding conquerors. Charles I of England, as we observed before, had in inclination to perform, what a great warrior effected afterwards; but the strictness of Gustavus’s morals, would not allow a depredation, though sanctified with the excuses of con gusto et con l’amore. Indeed there was a chimney-piece of rich marble, which struck the king’s fancy; insomuch, that he declared, between jest and earnest, that he had a sort of inclination to transport it to Stockholm ... as to plate, jewels, and other valuable moveables, the Swedes found the place entirely disfurnished; everything portable and precious, painting excepted, being previously removed to Salzburg. (Harte, 1759, 2: 169).

The difficulties to which Frederick alludes were probably of a practical nature, and not caused by rivalry or any prohibition of Gustav Adolf. To Frederick’s account may be added that of the temporary palace commander, Robert Monro, which provides further confirmation that the invaders did not discover an empty palace: many other rarities were gotten in this house worth much monie, which were transported away by both the Kings. As also the Dukes servants of his whole household were there, that bare offices about the house, and the House it self was as well replenished and furnished as any Kings Palace needed to be, of all magnificent furniture, for bed, board, and hangings, which were sumptuous and costly. Here also about this Palace were pleasant gardens, fishponds, waterworks, and all things yeelding pleasure in the most splendid grandure that can be imagined, with a pleasant Tennis-Court for recreation where both the Kings did sometimes recreat themselves (Monro 1999, 255–56).

Warming to the notion of Gustav Adolf’s morality, Harte offers an oration from the mouth of the king to his officers, who wished to pillage and burn: 50

Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 Although Monro clearly states that ‘many rarities’ were removed by ‘both the Kings’, he may have been mistaken with regard to Frederick; indeed, it would have been difficult for a non-participant in the removals to tell for whom particular objects were being taken. By mid-June, general news of the treasures discovered in Munich had reached London, and this was swiftly passed on by Pory to his clients:

Maximilian’s private correspondence, however, is sufficient to dispel any notion that the invaders took care to leave things as they found them, though instances of such scruples, admittedly in the context of lesser incursions, are to be found, albeit rarely, in other wars of the first half of the seventeenth century.12 With barely contained fury, on 12 June 1632, Maximilian wrote to Francesco Crivelli, the Bavarian Resident in Rome, that what the Swedes had done would last long in the memory – longer even than the wait for a Jubilee;13 that there were now more ashes than houses (here, he was referring to the countryside rather than to Munich); and that he couldn’t begin to speak of the looting of his residences, palaces, and other properties (Gregorovius, 1880, 330–376). At this time, Maximilian had yet to receive detailed reports on what had happened to his possessions.

The same king also found a great court at the palace adorned with his hangings, pictures, and carpets, and great quantity of his own plate with his armes engraven upon it (Powell 1977, 274 [microfiche]). A certain confusion surrounding the depredations in the Residenz may be attributable to the improvisational nature of the occupation. Unlike the storming of Prague’s Kleinseite by the Swedes in 1648,11 the capture of Munich was not motivated to any great extent by a desire for the artworks and other rarities that lay within. There existed no general plan for the removal of the collections, and the presence of so many princes, nobles, and generals, including Frederick of Bohemia, Dukes Wilhelm and Bernhard of Weimar, Count Palatine August of Sulzbach, and Johann of Holstein-Gottorp, not to mention the Swedish aristocracy, created a kind of plunderers’ pecking order. Though we might have expected to find Hamilton towards the rear, Frederick’s testimony suggests otherwise.

Gustav Adolf is known to have taken at least eleven paintings for himself. His eye fell in particular upon the panels of the history cycle commissioned by Duke Wilhelm IV (ruled 1508–1550): the work of several Germanspeaking painters, among them Albrecht Altdorfer and Jörg Breu the Elder (Cuneo 1998, 178–234), described recently as ‘one of the major monuments of humanist culture in Early Modern Europe’ (Greiselmayer 1996, 181–82). These wood panels, which, if stood up in their frames, would have come close to head height, had not, understandably, been carted to safety when the ducal family was evacuated. By 1632, they were no longer displayed together; some were displayed in the Kammergalerie, others in the Kunstkammer. The cycle consisted of four heroes of the Roman Republic, depicted in great battle or crowd scenes: Horatius Cocles; Q. Mucius Scaevola; T. Manlius Torquatus; and Marcus Curtius; also four great generals of antiquity: Alexander at the Issus; Hannibal at Cannae; Scipio Africanus at Zama; and Caesar at Alesia. These were balanced within the cycle by other histories of antique and biblical heroines. To possess them – at least the histories of the heroes – was to invite comparison with their subjects in terms of courage and generalship. Of all the Schwedenbeute taken during the Thirty Years’ War the removal to Stockholm of T. Manlius Torquatus by Ludwig Refinger, dated 1537 (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, NM 296; Glaser 1980, II/2, no. 680); Horatius Cocles (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, NM 294; Glaser 1980, II/2, no. 681); and Q. Mucius Scaevola by Abraham, dated 1533 (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, NM 295; Glaser 1980, II/2, no. 682) would have been regarded by contemporaries as the most apt and justified.

Maximilian had sufficient warning of the approach of the Swedes to remove to safety the contents of his Schatzkammer, located in the Silberturm of the Neuveste: his jewels, goldsmiths’ works, and silver plate, much of which had been amassed – some, indeed, commissioned – by his grandfather, Duke Albrecht V and grandmother, Anna, in the third quarter of the previous century (Seelig 2001, 101–119). He was also able to bury many cannons under the floor of the Magazine House (which were subsequently discovered), but whereas these could be hidden within palace precincts, removing very large collections of fragile objects was impracticable, and in any case, the Swedes began patrolling the approaches to Munich long before their main army arrived. Much of the collections, therefore, remained in place, as did the household servants, possibly in the hope that Gustav Adolf would be less inclined to despoil a normally functioning palace than an abandoned one. To a large extent, this is how Gustav Adolf behaved. He allowed himself, much as a visiting prince in peaceful times, to be conducted on a tour of the Residenz, and for about ten days, as observed by Monro, he enjoyed its facilities, including its tennis court. The duke’s park keepers also demonstrated how they could bring as many as a thousand deer to be viewed from the palace (Monro 1999, 256).

It would appear, however, that Julius Caesar at Alesia, which was also removed from the Residenz, was taken In 1644, Frederick’s son, Prince Rupert, forbade the plundering and torching of Denton Hall in Yorkshire, the seat of Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, though for an exceptional reason: Fairfax’s two brothers, William and John, had been killed on the same day in 1621 in the defence of the Palatine stronghold of Frankenthal; see Johnson (1848, 40). 13 As well as being familiar with the Papal innovation, Maximilian would have known the original Old Testament definition of a jubilee, as occurring every 50 years, and being an occasion for the restoration of property to the status quo ante; see Leviticus XXV, 8–11. 12

I have recalled with both profit and pleasure a conversation with the late Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre of Glanton) on the subject of Queen Kristina’s war booty, leading me to the view that the nature of Swedish plundering, specifically the extent to which it sought to conform to a defined Ius belli, changed after the death of Gustav II Adolf. 11

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor by someone other than Gustav Adolf, as it did not go to Sweden, and was eventually retrieved by Maximilian (Glaser 1980, II/2, 424). With much the same thinking as that behind the 1632 appropriations, the Emperor Napoleon would deprive Munich of the Alesia panel a second time, removing it (and Altdorfer’s Issus) to Paris, where Friedrich Schlegel would admire it in the summer of 1804. If the fulfilment of the promise to Rankin, however improbable this may have been, is taken as the ideal outcome of the Munich depredations as far as the collections of Charles I are concerned, then all the rarities taken by others may be regarded as in this sense ‘lost’ to Charles. Would Charles, however, have looked coldly upon these scenes of massed soldiery by the hands of such painters as Schöpfer and Refinger had they been delivered to him? The several moves between palaces during the reigns of James I and Charles I of the Battle of Pavia, a picture similar in style, school, and subject (if not scale) that had long been in the English Royal Collection, carried out in order that it should remain conspicuous, are grounds for avoiding such an assumption (Wilks 2005, 161–62).

Raphaël Trichet du Fresne, reveals that shortly before her abdication there were statues that had never been unpacked, though these may have come from Italy as recently as 1649. One might expect that any large pieces of sculpture taken as plunder in 1632 would, like items under other headings, such as ‘les medailles’ and ‘les tableaux’, have borne the provenance: ‘de Muniken’, or ‘de Münschen’. Yet, not only the King took such rarities; private arrangements for the carriage of objects to Sweden and to other parts of Germany were undoubtedly made. Giambologna’s Bathsheba appears to be an example of such an importation by a senior Swedish officer. Now in the Getty Collection, and formerly at Åkerö, a country house in Södermanland, having probably been transferred from the Stenbock Palace in Stockholm, the Bathsheba has been tallied with ‘un’altra figura di marmo a sedere della grandezza d’una fanciulla di sedici anni, la quale statua fu mandata al Duca di Baviera’, mentioned by Borghini (Avery 1983, 340–49). Johann Gabriel Stenbock, a prominent Swedish courtier (riksmarskalk from 1673), and owner of a notable art collection in the reigns of Queen Kristina, Carl X, and Carl XI, appears to have inherited the Bathsheba from his father, Fredrick Gustavsson Stenbock, who commanded the elite Smålands cavalry from 1631 until the moment he was seriously wounded in the battle of Lützen in November 1632, (Hofberg et al. 1906. 2: 521); a misfortune that led to a greater one for the Swedes, as Gustav Adolf then took it upon himself to ride at the head of Stenbock’s men, only to be killed.

The Suicide of Lucretia and Susanna and the Elders, which seem not to have been in the Kammergalerie in 1632 but in the Kunstkammer, were also taken to Sweden (to be bought back by the Bavarian State in the late 19th century), together with the Judgement of Paris (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, NM 258), another work by one of the painters who contributed to the great cycle, Abraham Schöpfer (Anell and Fraprie 1911, 4–5). The work of Lucas Cranach the Elder, well represented in the Wittelsbach collections, attracted the attentions of the occupiers, and several examples were taken, including The Ill-matched Couple, a panel that would have appealed both for its detail and for its manifest embodiment of skill (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, NM 258). No doubt for similar reasons, Joachim Beuckelaer’s Market Scene: Ecce Homo, the Flagellation, and the Carrying of the Cross – its essential religious message visually subordinate to its bustling contemporary setting – was also removed (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, NM 321).

Whereas the contents of the Schatzkammer were hurried away by the Bavarians, little attempt was made to deny the old ducal Kunstkammer to the Swedes. Many of the objects would have defied swift packing, such as statuettes of terracotta; ‘Indian’ feather works; marine wonders; waxworks; and Plaster of Paris casts (Seelig 2001, 105). This collection, built up by successive dukes to become one of the greatest in Renaissance Europe, containing 7000 objects, had been revealed and expounded to a public readership as early as 1565 by Samuel Quiccheberg, an associate of the banker-turned-antiquary, Hans Jacob Fugger, in the earliest printed museological book, Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi (Hajós 1958; 1963; Brunner 1977; Roth 1998; 2000; Seelig 2001; Meadows 2002; Fickler 2004). It was also recommended in Braun and Hogenberg’s well-read and much reprinted Civitas Orbis Terrarum, first published in 1586, and at the turn of the century it was also mentioned by the Dutch antiquary, Abraham Gorlaeus (Seelig 2001, 101– 102). During Maximilian’s rule, it had become more of a Wunderkammer, as works of fine art were transferred to the newer and more private Kammergalerie (Diemer 1980; Bachtler et al. 1980), while Maximilian’s collection of antique coins had been located in the Antiquarium since 1603 (Seelig 2001, 113). Its portability as well as its desirability militated against its neglect by the intruders, and, indeed, the coins, if not the cabinet, were taken by Gustav Adolf. Elsewhere, the Finnish field marshal, Gustav

Rankin had always envisaged sculpture as well as pictures among the booty to be taken from Munich. Though he might not have heard specifically of the Antiquarium, the cavernous, ornately decorated hall occupying the ground floor beneath the grand-ducal library, designed by Jacopo Strada, he had certainly heard of the large collection of sculptures (mainly Antique and Renaissance busts and statues), which it housed (Seelig 2001, 101–102). When a palace or great house is looted, the heavy and cumbersome nature of large statuary ensures that it is always removed last, if at all. It would have been necessary to have the greatest confidence in the security of the supply lines out of Bavaria, and beyond, before making the effort to load heavy wagons in Munich. Probably as a consequence of such thinking, no sculptures are listed in a Swedish state inventory of the booty of May 1632 (Nationalmuseum 1923). Avery (1983, 348) notes that the Inventaire des Raretez...1652, compiled by Queen Kristina’s keeper, 52

Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 Horn, took quarters in the house of Maximilian’s brotherin-law, Albrecht, where the main recorded losses were, again, pictures, but also horses and cattle (Glaser 1980, II/2, 424), which serves as a reminder that a marauding army, deep in enemy territory, will take what it needs before that which it fancies.

its inlaid inscription, was made by Maximilian’s own hand (Stockholm, HGK SS 148; Glaser 1980 II/2, no. 683). Such works, wrought by princes throughout Renaissance Europe in lathe rooms similar to that which survives in Skokloster Castle, and then displayed in their Kunstkammern to testify to their makers’ endowed powers of concentration and application, indicate the close personal involvement these princes had with their cabinets (Connors 1990; Gambaruto 1989). Notable turners included the Electors Augustus and Christian I of Saxony; also Christian IV and Frederik III of Denmark. Charles I, however, appears not have had this kind of creative engagement with his collections. The survival of this piece may be attributed to its association with Maximilian, as any desire to possess such an intrinsically fascinating and admirable object must surely have been accompanied by recognition of its perfect suitability as a trophy.

In the case of the looting of Heidelberg, the chief beneficiary had been a third party: the Pope, to whom the Palatine Library had been brought in a slow-moving wagon train (that paused at Munich); this precedent may have given Rankin encouragement in devising his proposal, but the plundering of the Residenz proved to be nothing like the orderly process he had naively envisaged. This is became clear to Maximilian in his unrelenting efforts to identify those who had been chiefly responsible for his loss, to take revenge on them, and either retrieve some of his former possessions or instigate retaliatory plundering (which characterized much of the plundering of the middle and later phases of the War). Maximilian’s investigations revealed that there had been no organized removal of his collections, with perhaps the exception of the library. There is evidence that Gustav Adolf had scholars on hand to send into Maximilian’s library to appraise and select. Indeed, by the time of the Munich occupation, the Swedes were experienced and informed plunderers of libraries; a practice that had begun in the war with the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth (Belper 2001; Walde 1916).

Hamilton had made it clear to Charles that he intended to go to Munich, partly to secure pictures and sculptures. As for Vane, we not only know that he also followed the Swedish army to Munich, but we have his own testimony that he visited the Residenz; for he recounted that it was in the Great Saloon that he intercepted Gustav Adolf, and attempted to intercede for Colonel George Douglas of Mordington, who had brought a grievance onto the tennis court when the two kings were at play, and had been imprisoned for the offence (Harte 1759, 2: 237). It remains to be decided whether Vane’s comings-and-goings to the Residenz at the very moment its collections were being removed may be connected with the cache of art that he subsequently brought out of Germany and presented to Charles.

On 14 May, Maximilian enquired what had happened to his Kunstkammer, and received a summary on 28 July. He was told that the Kunstkammer had been greatly abused, that many objects had been smashed to pieces, and all that remained were a few poor pieces that had been considered not worth taking (Granberg 1929, 1: 39). Among this wreckage were the remains of the much-admired coral mountains (Seelig 2001, 97). Such acts of destruction probably took place after the early departure of Gustav Adolf. Initially, Maximilian placed the blame for the looting and damage on Gustav Adolf and his hofmarskalk, Bernwulf von Krailsheim, but as he learned more, he formed the opinion that the worst of it had been perpetrated by Wilhelm of Weimar, whose force of 2000 cavalry was the last of the allies to leave Bavaria. Maximilian’s information was correct: Wilhelm of Weimar took at least sixty manuscripts, including the illuminated Bible of Pfalzgraf Offheinreichs, two 13th-century manuscripts of the Weltchronik of Rudolf of Ems, and 29 volumes of Jacopo Strada’s drawings of the likenesses of emperors on antique coins (Rystad 1980, 425). Maximilian condemned Wilhelm of Weimar in a letter he wrote on 6 October to Pappenheim, who was at that time preparing to invade Saxony, in which he urged the Imperialist general to burn Weimar lands to ashes in reprisal, and to remove paintings and other art works, large and small, taking care to use plenty of padding when packing them (Walde 1916, 1: 210).

In Van der Doort’s ‘Catalogue’, alongside the entry for a life-size, half-length portrait of a merchant is the note: Brought out of Germany by sir Henry Vaine Therr of yor Mats houshould and given to your Maty, done by some good Germaine painter (Millar 1960, 69). Similar notes also accompany a portrait of a German wearing a fur hat and a fur-lined habit, with his wife (Millar 1960, 80); an early sixteenth-century miniature of a young, beardless man, fancied to resemble either Henry VII or Henry VIII, ‘houlding in his hand some 3 little flowers called harts ease, and a Ladies hand touch his hart whereby written with some goulden Letters being in a round ould tourn’d Box of wood, wherein another round little Carv’d frame is, in wch the Picture is sett’ (Millar 1960, 115); also a life-size, bronze head of a woman, blacklacquered and mounted on a pedestal (Millar 1960, 97). This small but diverse group of objects may be interpreted as a well-chosen personal offering by one of Charles’s intimates. Vane would have presented them together with Cornelis Visscher’s Erasmus (Millar 1960, 79): Elizabeth of Bohemia’s gift to her brother, entrusted to Vane when he visited the ‘Winter Queen’ in Holland on his return journey. It is unlikely that Vane knew as much about art as other ambassadors of James I and Charles I, such as Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Dudley Carleton, Sir Thomas Roe, and

Still displayed in Stockholm today, and emblematic of the plunder of the Kunstkammer, is a three-tiered, ovaloid table ornament made of turned ivory, which, according to 53

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Hamilton’s brother-in-law, Basil Feilding, Earl of Denbigh, but any of Charles’s senior servants finding himself in a position to enhance the King’s collections knew enough to know that he should act. Vane was credited by Van der Doort with the acquisition of only one other group, bought not in Germany but at St James’s, and later kept in a cabinet in the Whitehall Cabinet Room, consisting of five chased silver pieces by Théodore Rasières of Antwerp: a round plate: a Rape of Europa, and four square plates: two different designs on the theme of a Landscape with Figures and a Satyr; a Hermaphrodite and Woman with Children; and a Pyramus and Thisbe (Millar 1960, 149–50).

the palace precincts to guard, he might already have been accustomed to taking advantage of temporarily conferred authority to indulge in plundering. Whereas Hepburn’s and Hamilton’s friendship would be in full view when they left the service of Gustav Adolf together, we find no record of contact between Hepburn and Vane while in Germany, though some bond would have had to exist if Hepburn had enabled the ambassador to depart from Munich with rarities. Yet, in 1633, when Vane was in London and Hepburn in Scotland recruiting soldiers to serve with him in France, it emerged that Vane had returned from Germany hugely in debt to Hepburn, owing £1189 sterling or 14,268 Scots pounds. This had not been incurred in the form of a loan to support an under-funded embassy, but was clearly a private debt, which Vane’s agents, met with Hepburn’s insouciance, found remarkably difficult to repay (Bruce et al. 1858– 1897, 6: 72).

The most prized of Vane’s German acquisitions, was probably the bronze head, as it was accorded a prominent position in the new Cabinet Room at Whitehall, where it sat on a table, paired with a bronze bust of the King by Le Sueur. Van der Doort comments that it ‘was said to be an Antiquity of Piety’, which further strengthens its candidature as a piece from the Antiquarium. Assuming Vane did acquire these objects in Munich, he had faced a harder task than Hamilton, who, despite the ignominy of losing an army but not a battle, was still accorded the dignity of a general in Gustav Adolf’s service. Vane, however, was merely an ambassador, and had no right to share in the plunder, and had, besides, become very irksome to the Swedish king. Clearly, he would have needed someone to remove objects for him, or to yield objects already taken. It may be thought highly fortuitous for both Vane and Hamilton that the Residenz was entirely under the control of Scottish officers during the occupation. One figure above all others attracts attention as the possible facilitator: Sir John Hepburn, commander of the three regiments within the city – all Scottish. Hepburn valued his honour above all things, and the wrongs and sleights he conceived that he and his fellow Scottish officers had suffered while in the service of Sweden accumulated in his mind. Gustav Adolf teased him about his sumptuous apparel and expensive armour, and at the cost of the service of one of his bravest officers, would ultimately tease him about his Catholic religion. He may well have been inclined to assist Vane after the Douglas incident.

There remains to be considered one more ‘Hamilton’ piece catalogued in the Whitehall Cabinet Room: a statuette of the Laocoön, standing a little over 50 cm. tall, presumably of bronze. A fair copy (the ‘Windsor MS’) of Abraham van der Doort’s working draft, states: Item the statua of Laocon wth his two— Sonns killed by the great Serpents wch my Lo: Marquess brought from Germany out of the Duke of . .Chamber, as tis— Called in High Dutch. 2f2—0f0 (Millar 1960, 95 [no.26]; 212). It appears that the copyist was defeated by Van der Doort’s Hoch Deutsch, and left a blank to be filled in later, and, unfortunately, the relevant section is missing from Van der Doort’s working draft of the Catalogue (Bodleian, MS Ashmole 1514). There was, however, only one German duke’s chamber from which Hamilton could possibly have extracted such an object in 1632, and that was in Maximilian’s Residenz. It has been suggested that Maximilian did not share Albrecht V’s and Wilhelm V’s enthusiasm for such Renaissance sculpture, particularly the work of Giambologna; that he spurned it for the work of Albrecht Dürer, and that evidence of this is his refusal of six bronze reliefs with scenes of the Passion by Giambologna, offered by the citizens of Nuremberg in 1630 in return for an agreement that soldiers would not be billeted on them (Leithe-Jasper 1978, 51–59). Such an assessment seems both over-simplistic and naive, and the fact remains that, as with all the more sophisticated princes of the period, Renaissance statuettes remained an important element within Maximilian’s collections. Indeed, Seelig (2001, 115, note 58) observes that several bronzes now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, and presumably never alienated from the ducal/state collection, ‘were probably (in some cases certainly) produced for the Kunstkammer’.

Hepburn, as noted earlier, had been given command of the castle and cathedral of Würzburg after its capture in October 1631, and it was here that Vane had first met him, though it is possible that Hamilton might have encountered him earlier at Werben. Otto Walde, the great chronicler of Swedish war booty, hinted that Hepburn might have had something to do with the Würzburg manuscripts that later came into William Laud’s possession (Walde 1916, 1: 123). It was a suggestion based on little more than the Archbishop’s and the Colonel’s common Britishness, but Walde was probably right. Any manuscripts that Hepburn had taken from Würzburg would have either travelled with him through Germany, or been deposited in a place of safety, until his resignation from the army almost a year later, when they would have accompanied him (and Hamilton) to England. When, therefore, at Munich, Hepburn was again made governor, and his longstanding friend, Robert Monro given

The small Laocoön was, arguably, more suited to the private Kammergalerie than the Antiquarium or the Kunstkammer, but though it may have been there at the 54

Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 beginning of May, it was, remarkably, in Charles I’s possession by the end of October. Thereafter, it became one of 36 statuettes in the Cabinet Room in Whitehall, which Charles formed around a core collection of 18 bronzes by Pietro Tacca, inherited from Prince Henry, who had received them from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1612. Even surrounded by such works of high quality, the Laocoön was sufficiently esteemed by Charles to become the centrepiece of a symmetrical arrangement on one side of the Cabinet Room (Millar 1960, 95–96).14 It was flanked by two smaller figurines: a Bacchus (no. 25) and a Minerva (no. 27); these were a pair, and, being made ‘of Corinthian Mettle’, were somewhat golden in appearance, providing a contrast in colour as well as in size. These were flanked by two equestrian pieces: Le Sueur’s Charles I on Horseback (no. 24) and Francesco Fanelli’s St George and the Dragon (no. 28). On either side of these, and furthest away from the Laocoön, were two sculptures in wood: a Countryman (no. 23) and an Eve (no. 29).

up of forces took place, and the construction of massive earthworks, which, on the Protestant side, incorporated the perimeter defences of Nuremberg. When Arundel’s embassy passed these defences in 1636, William Crowne, observed in his diary that the King of Bohemia and Lord Craven had been there with Gustav Adolf (Springell 1963, 61). Indeed, it was clear that the confrontation outside Nuremberg might decide the War, and, therefore, attendance became de rigeur for all who considered they had a considerable stake in the outcome. We know that Hamilton had taken lodging within Nuremberg before the armies confronted each other outside the walls, by which time, probably, most of his gifts for Charles were already stowed in his baggage, together with any items he might have acquired for his own collection. Even so, this postMunich phase of Hamilton’s stay in Germany deserves no less attention with regard to the availability of rarities than the pre-Munich phase. Here, the Earl of Arundel’s assessment of Nuremberg in May 1636 is enlightening:

As the main Swedish army withdrew to Augsburg with its booty at the end of May, Hamilton and Vane went with it. Vane would soon return to England, but Hamilton still hoped to be given another force to command, though his indignation was mounting. He considered whether he should endure whatever accommodation might now be offered to him as a mere private volunteer, or, whether he should ‘remain in sume towne’.’ (Douglas-Hamilton 1887, 81 [no. 59]). He appears to have found comfort in Augsburg, where the mixed Catholic and Protestant population had a shared interest in attempting to maintain normality, and where artists and artisans continued to work – it was here that Philipp Hainhofer demonstrated to Gustav Adolf the features of his Kunstschrank, which the city had presented to the King (Boström 2001a; 2001b). When the army moved on, Hamilton lingered; which Gustav Adolf attributed to petulance. At the end of May, his kinsman, the artillery expert, Sir Alexander Hamilton, wrote that the King ‘enquired of me what relation you hade made of that which passed at Munchen’, and that ‘to acte your part he pulled my hatt out of my hand and put it on in such a huffling manner as I never saw and then enquired whether it was a fitting way for you to use him’ (McMaster and Wood. 1932, 21). In subsequent letters he wrote: ‘it is not a little wondered at by his Maj. that your journey was so long between Augsburg and Nuremberg’, and later, in mid-June: ‘all that we have done by this journey is the hastening of the enemyes joyning, and a hope to see shortly their intentions, which if it hold for Nuremberg… your Lo. then will have convenience to be with the King’ (McMaster and Wood. 1932, 23, 25).

I am come in Portte, as it were, and found a most myserable Countrye, and nothing by ye way to be bought of any momente, heere in this towne being not one scrach of Alb: Duers paintinge in oyle to be sold, though it were his Countrye, nor of Holbien, nor any other greate Master. They say within these three or four yeers greate store of good thinges have bin carryed out at easy rates. (Hervey 1921, 365–66). ‘Four yeers’ harks back to the very time of Gustav Adolf’s arrival at Nuremberg, bringing the War with him. This induced a great sense of insecurity, followed by the near panic selling of chattels for cash. If Hamilton wished to add further to his haul, he may have found himself, at last, in a buyers’ market. Hans Hieronymus Imhoff, the inheritor of the libraries and art collections of Willibald Pirckheimer (d. 1530) and Willibald Imhoff (1519–1580), still had some artworks for sale in 1634, selling some of these to Abraham Blommart, which were then taken to Amsterdam; though the best of the Pirckheimer-Imhoff art collection had already been taken by the Emperor Rudolf II (1588) and Maximilian of Bavaria (1630). Finding no good pictures left on the market, Arundel bought the Pirckheimer Library (Springell 1963, 104–108), but on his return visit in November the city council produced Dürer’s Self-portrait (1498) and Albrecht Dürer the Elder (1497), wishing Arundel to present them to Charles I. This, Springell suggests, may only have been prompted by the shaming murder of two of the Earl’s servants near the city (Springell 1963, 129–31). That Hamilton had witnessed the subsequent, inconclusive Battle of the Alte Veste is confirmed by his presence at Neustadt, the town to which Gustav Adolf withdrew his army immediately afterwards. Here, Hamilton took his leave, no longer able to endure the indignity of being without a command. He departed with Hepburn, Sir James Hamilton of Priestfield, and Sir James Ramsay ‘the Fair’, and, having succeeded in becoming generally popular with the Scottish officers serving Gustav Adolf,

In July, Gustav Adolf drew up his army at Fürth, near to Nuremberg, which he wished to deny to the combined armies of Wallenstein and Maximilian (Gindely 1885, 2: 134). Over the next fifty-six days an enormous buildHow the sequence of items catalogued by Van der Doort may be read to reveal display arrangements in Charles I’s palaces is also demonstrated in Wilks (2005), though only with regard to the gallery in St James’s Palace. 14

55

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor was accompanied for a mile beyond the town by those intending to remain with the Swedish army (Harte 1759, 2: 297; Grant, Hepburn, 1851, 205). In late October, the Venetian ambassador in London reported Hamilton’s return (Brown et al. 1864–1947, 23: 19).

When the banker, Philip Burlamachi, had been asked to fund simultaneously both the Duke of Buckingham’s expedition to relieve the Huguenots of La Rochelle and the purchase of the Mantuan Collection, he protested that although he might be able to find the money for one, he was at a loss to know how to finance both (Sainsbury 1859, 323). Charles would abandon neither, but for time his foreign policy aspirations and his collecting passions seemed in competition. Five years later, the extent of England’s influence abroad again ultimately depended on Burlamachi’s borrowing abilities, but this time, any hope of attaining the art collection of another stricken dynasty (Wittelsbach replacing Gonzaga), depended on a substantial commitment to war. Sir Thomas Roe dearly wished to have been sent to negotiate with Gustav Adolf instead of Vane, convinced he could secure the Palatinate on acceptable terms. He was not sent for the simple reason that Charles dreaded the mix of commitments and concessions that Roe might give. One suspects, however, that if Roe – an unlikely combination of militant Protestant and self-deprecating connoisseur – rather than Vane had been the English ambassador following the Swedes to Munich, the art dividend would have been far more considerable. It was, nonetheless, remarkable that Hamilton’s Laocoön and Vane’s Head of Woman came to the Cabinet Room at Whitehall, where Charles, their new owner, while contemplating them, could reflect on unattained objectives in Germany.

In our attempt to gauge the seriousness of the ‘Rankin plan’, we should take into account Gustav Adolf’s and Charles’s markedly different styles of kingship. Charles attempted with some success to enhance his regal status by requiring decorum and formality at his court. This was partly engendered by the changed appearance of the palace interiors after his accession. Charles also kept his distance from his subjects, reacting against his father’s public coarseness and sentimentality, but also aware that he lacked a powerful presence able to withstand the press of courtiers and suitors. Gustav Adolf, by contrast, was shaped by the many years he had spent with his army, when royal visibility and approachability were essential, and informality often unavoidable. Sir Thomas Roe described Gustav Adolf as ‘commiles [i.e., a brother-in-arms] with every man, and [one who] gives besides excellent words and good usage as much as he hath’ (Strachan 1989, 200). It would, therefore, have been entirely consistent with his manner for Gustav Adolf to hear out Rankin, and even to remember, much later, to give due reward for advice that proved good, as Roe himself experienced. Many months after returning to England, and after Gustav Adolf’s great victory at Breitenfeld, Roe was astonished to receive a letter from the Swedish king announcing that he was to receive a load of copper worth £2500 (Strachan 1989, 200; Bruce et al. 1858–1897, 5: 276). In view of Roe’s present (presumably a cargo from Sweden), the notion of Rankin receiving a consignment of pictures and statues, though it never transpired, seems closer to the realm of possibility.

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A portion of Maximilian’s art treasures would only ever have formed part of a much larger agreement between the two kings; something to seal a great treaty. However, Suckling observed as early as November 1631: The king of Suede takes it not altogether so well, that his Majesty will not declare himself, nor in such an opportunity, send men or money (Clayton 1971, 123). Charles remained unwilling to end the peace with Spain that had always been one of the cornerstones of Stuart policy, and would not support Gustav Adolf with soldiers and finance if he required the Palatinate to be a vassal state. Despite months of negotiations, no grand alliance was ever achieved. A month after the occupation of Munich, the Venetian ambassador in London reported: With respect to the contributions from this quarter for the King of Sweden, about which they are always treating, but have not yet concluded, they seem to have postponed the matter until they see what sum in ready cash Burlamachi will bring on his return from France (Brown et al. 1864–1947, 22: 630).

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Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums, 90 –101, London, Stratus. Boström, H-O. 2001b. Det underbara skåpet: Philipp Hainhofer och Gustav II Adolfs konstskå. Uppsala, Uppsala University. Bromley, G. 1787. A Collection of Original Royal Letters... from the Year 1619, to 1665. London, J. Stockdale. Brotton, J. 2006. Buying the Renaissance: Prince Charles’s art purchases in Madrid, 1623, in A. Samson (ed.), The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 9–26. Aldershot, Ashgate. Brotton, J. 2006. The Sale of the Late King’s Goods. Charles I and his Art Collection. Basingstoke, Macmillan. Brotton, J. and McGrath, D. 2008. The Spanish acquisition of King Charles I’s art collection. The letters of Alonso de Cárdenas, 1649–51. Journal of the History of Collections 20 (1), 1–16. Brown R. et al. (eds.) 1864-1947. Calendar of state papers and manuscripts, relating to English affairs, existing in the archives and collections of Venice, and in other libraries of northern Italy. 38 vols, London, H. M. S. O. Brown, J. 1994. Kings and Connoisseurs. Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Brown, J. and Elliott J. H. (eds.), 2002. The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations between Spain and Great Britain. New Haven and London, Yale. Bruce, J. et al. (eds.) 1858-1897. Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles I: preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office. 24 vols, London, Longman. Brunner, H. 1977. Die Kunstschatze der Münchner Residenz. Munich, Süddeutscher. Bruyn, J. and Millar, O. 1962. The ‘Dutch Gift’ to Charles I. Burlington Magazine 104, 28–31. Burnet, G. 1677. The Memoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William Dukes of Hamilton and Castleherald, etc. London, R. Royston. Campbell, L. 1985. The early Flemish pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge, CUP. Chaney, E. (ed.) 2003. The Evolution of English Collecting. New Haven and London, Yale. Chaney, E. 2000. The Evolution of the Grand Tour. 2nd edn, London and Portland, OR, Frank Cass. Clayton, T. (ed.) 1971. The Works of Sir John Suckling. The Non-Dramatic Works. Oxford, OUP. Connors, J. 1990. Ars Tornandi: Baroque architecture and the lathe. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53, 217–36. Cuneo, P. F. 1998. Art and Politics in Early Modern Gernany. Jörg Breu the Elder and the Fashioning of Political Identity, ca, 1475–1536. Leiden, Brill. Diemer, P. 1980. Materialen zu Entstehung und Ausbau der Kammergalerie Maximilians I. von Bayern, in H. Glaser (ed.), Quellen und Studien zur Kunstpolitik der Wittelsbacher vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert 1, 129 –174. Munich, Piper. Donne, J. 1930. The Courtier’s Library, or Catalogus Librorum Aulicorum incomparabilium et non vendibilium, E. Simpson (ed.), London, Nonesuch.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Harte, Walter. 1759. The History of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden. 2 vols, London. Hervey, M. F. S. 1921. The Life, Correspondence, and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. Cambridge, CUP. Hill, R. 1999. Works of Art as Commodities. Art and Patronage: the Career of Sir Dudley Carleton 1610–1625, unpublished PhD thesis, Nottingham Trent University. Hill, R. 2003. The Ambassador as Art agent: Sir Dudley Carleton and Jacobean Collecting’, in E. Chaney (ed.) The Evolution of English Collecting, 240–55. New Haven and London, Yale. Hill, R. and Lockyer, R. 2003. Carleton and Buckingham: the quest for office revisited. History 88 (289), 17–31. Hofberg, H. et al. 1906. Svenskt biografiskt handlelexikon. 2 vols, Stockholm, Bonniers. Howarth, D. 1985. Lord Arundel and his Circle. New Haven and London, Yale. Johnson, G. W. (ed.) 1848. The Fairfax Correspondence. 2 vols, London, Bentley. King, D. 1989. Textile Furnishings, in A. MacGregor (ed.) 1989. The Late King’s Goods, 307–21. London, Alistair McAlpine/OUP. Leithe-Jasper, M. 1978. Bronze statuettes by Giambologna in the Imperial and other early collections, in C. Avery and A. Radcliffe (eds.), Giambologna 1529–1608, Sculptor to the Medici, 51–59. London, Arts Council of Great Britain. Levey, M. 1964. The later Italian pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge, CUP. Lightbown, R. W. 1969. Van Dyck and the purchase of paintings for the English Court, Burlington Magazine 111, 418–21. Loomie, A. J. 1989. New light on the Spanish ambassador’s purchases from Charles I’s collection, 1649–53, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 52, 257–67. MacGregor, A. (ed.) 1983. Tradescant’s rarities: essays on the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum, 1683, with a catalogue of the surviving early collections. Oxford, Clarendon. MacGregor, A. (ed.) 1989. The Late King’s Goods: collections, possessions, and patronage of Charles I in the light of the Commonwealth sale inventories. London, Alistair McAlpine/OUP. MacGregor, A. 1996. King Charles I: A Renaissance Collector? The Seventeenth Century, 2, 141–60. Macray, W. D. 1868. Annals of the Bodleian Library, A.D. 1598–A.D. 1867. London, Rivington. Madan, F., Craster, H. H. E. and Denholm-Young, N. 1953. Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Oxford, Clarendon. Magurn R. S. (ed.) 1955. The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens. Cambridge, MA, Harvard. McEvansoneya, P. 1992. An unpublished inventory of the Hamilton Collection in the 1620s and the Duke of Buckingham’s pictures. Burlington Magazine 134, 524–526.

McGinnis P. and Williamson A. 2002. Britain, race, and the Iberian world empire, in Macinnes A. and Ohlmeyer J. (eds.), 70-93. The Stuart kingdoms in the seventeenth century: awkward neighbours. Dublin, Four Courts. McMaster J. and Wood M. 1932. Supplementary report on the manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Hamilton. London, H. M. S. O. Meadows, M. A. 2002. Hans Jacob Fugger and the origins of the Wunderkammer, in P. H. Smith and P. Findlen (eds.), Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, 182–200. London, Routledge. Miles, M. M. 2008. Art as Plunder. The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property. Cambridge, CUP. Millar, O. (ed) 1960. Abraham van der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles I. Walpole Society 37. Millar, O. (ed.) 1972. The inventories and valuations of the King’s goods 1649–1651. Walpole Society 43. Millar, O. 1963. The Tudor, Stuart, and Georgian Pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen. 2 vols, London, Phaidon. Millar, O. 1972. The Age of Charles I. Painting in England 1620–1649 London, Tate. Millar, O. 1977. The Queen’s Pictures. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Monro, R. 1999. Monro, His Expedition with the Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-Keys, ed. W. S. Brockington. Westport CT, Praeger. Murdoch, S. 2006. Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603–1746. Leiden, Brill. Nationalmuseum 1923. Nationalmusei årsbok. Stockholm. Nuttall, W. L. F. 1965. Charles I’s pictures and the Commonwealth Sale. Apollo 81, 302–309. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Paisey, D. 2002. Searching for Pirckheimer’s books in the remains of the Arundel Library at the Royal Society, in Enea Silvio Piccolomini nördlich der Alpen. Pirckheimer Jahrbuch für Renaissance- und Humanismusforschung 22, 159–211. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Parker, G. (ed.) 1997. The Thirty Years’ War. 2nd ed., London and New York, Routledge. Parry, G. 1981. The Golden Age Restor’d. Manchester, MUP. Piirimäe, P. 2002. Just war in theory and practice: the legitimation of Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. Historical Journal 45, 499–523. Powell, W.S. 1977. John Pory, 1572–1636. The Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina. Preston, C. 2006. The jocund cabinet and the melancholy museum in seventeenth-century English literature, in R. J. W. Evans and A. Marr (eds.) Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, 87–106. Aldershot, Ashgate. Pritchard, A. 1980. George Wither and the sale of the estate of Charles I. Modern Philology 77 (4), 370–381. Reade, B. 1947. William Frizell and the Royal Collection. Burlington Magazine 89, 70–75.

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Tim Wilks : Plundered art for the collections of Charles I? The capture of Munich in May, 1632 Redworth, G. 2003. The Prince and the Infanta. The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match. New Haven and London, Yale. Richardson, S. (ed.) 1740. The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe in his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte from the year 1621 to 1626. London, Strahan. Roberts, M. 1967. The Political Objectives of Gustav Adolf in Germany, 1630–32, in M. Roberts, Essays in Swedish History. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Roth, H. (ed.) 2000. Der Anfang der Museumslehre in Deutschland: Das Traktat ‘inscriptiones, Vel, Tituli Theatri Amplissim’ von Samuel Quiccheberg: lateinisch-deutsch. Berlin, Akademie Verlag. Roth, H. 1999. Die Bibliothek als Spiegel der Kunstkammer, in A. Assmann, M. Gomille, and G. Rippl (eds.) Sammler, Bibliophile, Exzentriker, 193– 210. Tübingen, Gunter Narr. Rubinstein, H. L. 1976. Captain Luckless: James, First Duke of Hamilton, 1606–1649 . Totowa, NJ, Rowman and Littlefield. Rundhart, G. T. 1856. König Gustav Adolf und Friedrich von der Pfalz in München, Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte, 42, 69–153. Rye, W. B. 1865. England as seen by Travellers in the Days of Elizabeth and James I. London, J. R. Smith. Rystad, G. 1980. Die Schweden in Bayern während des Dreissigjahrigen Krieges’, in H. Glaser (ed.) Um Glauben und Reich. Kurfürst Maximilian I., II/1, 424– 35. Munich, Piper. Sainsbury, W. N. 1859. Original unpublished Papers illustrative of the Life of Sir Peter Paul Rubens. London, Bradbury and Evans. Schädel, L. 1908. Gustav Adolf von Schwaden in München. Forschungen zu Geschichte Bayerns 16, 121–126. Schiller, von, J. C. F. 1860. The History of the Thirty Year’s War, trans. A. J. W. Morrison. London, H. G. Bohn. Scotland, Scandinavia, and Northern Europe Biographical Database, 1580–1707. Institute of Scottish Historical Research, University of St Andrews. Scroth, S. 1997. Charles I, the Duke of Lerma and Veronese’s Edinburgh ‘Mars and Venus’. Burlington Magazine 129, 548–550. Seelig, L. 2001. The Munich Kunstkammer, 1565–1807, in O. Impey and A. MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums: the Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century Europe, 101–119. London, Stratus. Shakeshaft, P. 1986. ‘Too much bewiched with thoes intysing things’: the letters of James, third Marquis of Hamilton and Basil, Viscount Feilding concerning collecting in Venice, 1635–1639. Burlington Magazine 128, 114–32. Shearman, J. 1972. Raphael’s Cartoons in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen. London, Phaidon. Shearman, J. 1983. The Early Italian Pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge, CUP. Spink, I. 1959. Lanier in Italy. Music & Letters 40, 242–252.

Springell, F. F. 1963. Connoisseur and Diplomat. The Earl of Arundel’s Embassy to Germany in 1636. London, Maggs.1963. Strachan, M. 1989. Sir Thomas Roe 1581–1644: a life. Salisbury, Michael Russell. Svenskt biografiskt handlelexikon. Tauss, S. 1998.‘... Daß die Räuberei das alleradeligste Exercitium ist...’ –Kunstschätze als Beute im Dreißigjährigen Krieg, in K. Bussmann and H. Schilling (eds.), 1648 – Krieg und Frieden in Europa. Textband II: Kunst und Kultur, 281–88. Munich, Bruckmann. Taylor, J. 1629. Wit and Mirth, chargeably collected out of Taverns, Ordinaries, Inns, etc. London, James Boler. Taylor, J. 1630. All the works of John Taylor, the water poet. Facsimile reprint, 1973, Menston, Scolar. Thurley, S. 1999. Whitehall Palace: an Architectural History of the Royal Apartments, 1240–1690. New Haven and London, Yale. Thurston, H. 1900. The Holy Year of Jubilee. An Account of the History and Ceremonial of the Roman Jubilee. London. Trapier, E. du G. 1967. Sir Arthur Hopton and the interchange of paintings between Spain and England in the 17th century. The Connoisseur 164, 239–43; 165, 60–3. Trevor-Roper, H. 1970. The Plunder of the Arts in the Seventeenth Century. London, Thames and Hudson. Tunberg, S. et al. 1935. Den Svenska Utrikesförvaltningens Historia. Uppsala, Almqvist and Wiksells. Vassor, le, M. 1751. Histoire Generale de l’Europe sous le Regne de Louis XIII. 19 vols, Amsterdam, Chatelain. Walde, O. 1916. Storhetstidens Litterära Krigsbytten. 2 vols, Uppsala and Stockholm, Almqvist and Wiksells. Wedgwood, C. V. 1944. The Thirty Years’ War. London, Jonathan Cape. White, C. 1982. The Dutch Pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge, CUP. Wilks, T. (ed.) 2007. Prince Henry Revived. Image and Exemplarity in Early Modern England. London, Paul Holberton. Wilks, T. 1989. The court culture of Prince Henry and his circle, 1603-1613, unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford. Wilks, T. 1989. The picture collection of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset (c.1587–1645), reconsidered, Journal of the History of Collections 1 (2 ), 167–77. Wilks, T. 1997. Art collecting at the English court from the death of Henry, Prince of Wales to the death of Anne of Denmark. Journal of the History of Collections, 9 (1), 31–48. Wilks, T. 2005. ‘Paying special attention to the adorning of a most beautiful gallery’: the pictures in St James’s Palace, 1609 to 1649. Court Historian 10 (2), 149–72. Williams, C. 1937. Thomas Platter’s Travels in England, 1599. London, Jonathan Cape. Wood, J. 2000-2001. Orazio Gentileschi and some Netherlandish artists in London: the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I and Henrietta Maria. Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 28 (3), 103–128.

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Collecting the overlooked: some baroque paintings from the collection of Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941) Catherine Whistler Abstract An intriguing group of seventeenth-century Italian paintings in the Ashmolean Museum that once belonged to Sir Arthur Evans (18511941) is the subject of this essay. Although Baroque art was viewed with disdain in Evans’s lifetime, his intellectual curiosity and bargain-hunting habits led him to acquire paintings whose merits were obscured not only by layers of dirt but also by scholarly indifference. Research on these paintings has brought more clarity on their subject-matter and authorship; two of them were painted by leading artists from Lucca whose art-historical significance has only recently been recognized. Keywords Arthur Evans; Baroque art; Luigi Garzi; Padovanino; Pietro Paolini; Giovanni Marracci

The title of Arthur MacGregor’s recent magisterial study of the history of collecting and of museums, Curiosity and Enlightenment, happily evokes his own character and intellectual engagement as a scholar and curator (MacGregor 2008). As a tribute to his wide range of interests, including his zest for oddities in the history of collecting, I’d like to offer a brief consideration of an intriguing group of baroque paintings that belonged to Sir Arthur Evans, and were presented or bequeathed by him to the Ashmolean Museum.

as an archaeologist he might well have relished acquiring paintings that were deeply unfashionable (of course, for that reason they were probably also very cheap). Moreover, in the Museum, his colleague Charles Bell (1871-1966) was something of a pioneer in his taste for the Italian baroque. He had been appointed in 1896 as Assistant Keeper to Evans, primarily to look after the Renaissance applied arts from Fortnum’s collection, and became the first Keeper of Fine Art in the newly amalgamated Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in 1908. I shall discuss first Evans’s ‘Guido Reni’, and then a group of three pictures bequeathed in 1941 that seem to share an unusual provenance.

Although paintings by Guido Reni, Domenichino, Pietro da Cortona and other celebrated seventeenth-century artists had been avidly acquired by British Grand Tourists and collectors, the early nineteenth century saw a gradual shift in taste towards the perceived purity and simplicity of the ‘primitives’. By the time Evans was born, it was widely held that Italian baroque art was characterised by decadence and insincerity, and was unworthy of study or contemplation. This view, which had been strongly formulated in the neo-classical art criticism of Johann Winckelmann and Anton Raphael Mengs, gained ground in early nineteenth-century Britain and was articulated with influential fervour by John Ruskin in particular. From the Victorian age down to the 1950s, Italian baroque art was regarded variously as eclectic, melodramatic, allied with superstition, and at best uninteresting. At the time of a pioneering exhibition in 1925, Osbert Sitwell vividly described the revision of taste in Victorian Britain which had meant that ‘Guido Reni and Carlo Dolci, Caravaggio and Luca Giordano, and a whole host of brightly plumaged underlings were hurled from those pedestals which for over a century they had shared with Phidias and Praxiteles into the outer darkness of stables, cellars and London mews’ (Sitwell 1925, 9).

In 1902, as he noted in a memo now in the picture file, Evans bought from the Guardalupi family at Brindisi an elegant painting then though to be by Guido Reni (Bologna 1575-1642) and identified as an Allegory of History and Oblivion, a subject no doubt dear to any archaeologist’s heart (Figure 1). Evans presented this to the Museum in 1929, and for a long time it was appropriately on loan to the History Faculty. In fact, the picture is by an artist very close to Luigi Garzi (Pistoia 1638-Rome 1721), a pupil of Andrea Sacchi who trained in the grand Roman tradition and admired Guido Reni. The allegory is actually of Vigilance and Love’s Oblivion – both figures are simplified versions of those described in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593), a familiar reference book for artists. Vigilance is traditionally shown as a woman with a book and a lit lantern, accompanied by a crane with a stone in its claw (Ripa, 1992, 466). Despite the absence of the crane the identification is clear. Vigilance of mind and of body is symbolized by this figure: learning equips man to face all that Fortune sends him, while books and contemplation keep somnolence at bay. Oblivione d’Amore is described by Ripa as a winged youth, asleep, crowned with poppies, next to a fountain with the inscription fons cyzici (Ripa, 1992, 320). Again, the fountain is omitted, but the principal figure is clearly identifiable (Sleep by comparison would have been a corpulent figure on a bed of poppies). Lovers are storm‑tossed, unquiet beings, but when their loves are forgotten (or when they sleep) their minds are at rest, and

Arthur Evans clearly enjoyed finding interesting paintings in out-of-the-way places, and he sometimes hoped that, under their darkened varnish, they might prove to be works by reputable sixteenth-century Italian artists. In fact, he came to own some unusual baroque pictures instead. However,

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Figure 1: Circle of Luigi Garzi (1638-721), Vigilance and Love’s Oblivion, oil on canvas, 139 x 147cms. Presented by Sir Arthur Evans in 1929 (WA 1929.8). Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford they can enjoy repose. Vigilance by contrast would help to prevent love’s excesses. The Ashmolean picture may have belonged to a group of allegorical subjects forming part of the decoration of a room, or it could have been one of two pendants. Without knowing its original context, the interpretation remains open-ended.

sent me to Crete & as in spite of its condition it seemed a good picture I despatched it to Buttery to clean. It was almost obscured by dirt & layers of blackened varnish but it has come out most brilliantly & Buttery says it is in an absolutely intact condition. ‑ He tells me that you saw it in the studio when it was still in its unregenerate state & mentioned to him a name connected with Paolo Veronese. If you have any suggestion to make as to the authorship would it be troubling you too much to send me a few lines. Is the subject allegorical?...’ (This letter, in the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz/ Zentralarchiv, was brought to my attention by Jeremy Warren). Bode’s reply of 13 November correctly identified the subject of the painting and noted ‘I mentioned to Mr Buttery the name of Carletto Caliari and Paolo Farinati, but the treatment of picture is large and too good for these artists. I own that I have not yet any name for it..’ A letter from the restorer, Ayerst Buttery, of 5 November

Evans hoped to rescue from oblivion a potentially important Venetian painting that he had discovered by accident (Figure 2), and he sought advice from the best authority. On 5 November 1907 he wrote to Wilhelm von Bode in Berlin: ‘I am sending you, in a roll (?), a photograph (which please do not trouble to return) of a Venetian picture that I ‘picked up’ at an Antike dealer’s in Athens. It lay among a lot of miscellaneous things & Byzantine icons & had apparently been on a Greek island since Venetian times. ‑ I had it

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Figure 2: Circle of Alessandro Varotari, il Padovanino (1588-1649), Hagar and Ishmael, oil on canvas, 113 x 101cms. Bequeathed by Sir Arthur Evans in 1941 (WA 1941.2) Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford reported that Sidney Colvin had been to see the painting, and the letter is annotated by Evans ‘has suggested to me Domenico Tintoretto’. (The letters are in the Western Art archive).

1649), who was inspired by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese – indeed, he made close copies of Titian’s mythological paintings, and his early career was driven by his emulation of the great master. Padovanino was also responsive to Roman art and became a brilliant colourist and a robust designer. His paintings were admired by some of Venice’s leading intellectuals, and he ran an important studio. If not by Padovanino himself, Evan’s picture is certainly by an artist close to the master, painted around 1600: scholarly interest in Padovanino is developing rapidly at present and it may be possible to pin down the painting’s authorship before long.

This broadly-handled painting depicts the biblical subject of Hagar and Ishmael. At the instigation of his wife, Sarah, who was miraculously pregnant, Abraham banished his concubine Hagar and her son Ishmael from his house. They were consoled by an angel in the desert who brought them food and water (Genesis 21:9-19). While the figures are wearing generic biblical dress (although Hagar’s crisp undershirt could well have been worn by a late sixteenth-century Venetian lady) the mountainous landscape background includes a Palladian-style church and some antique remains, placing the setting firmly in the Veneto. The painting has many affinities with the work of Alessandro Varotari, il Padovanino (Padua 1588-Venice

The provenance of Hagar and Ishmael is shared by another picture, according to Joan Evans who wrote that Arthur Evans had bought ‘a St Catharine attributed to Dosso Dossi and a Hagar and Ishmael of the school of Veronese almost invisible through coats of black varnish, from the

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 3: Pietro Paolini (1603-81), St Catherine of Alexandria, oil on canvas, 74.5 x 55.3cms. Bequeathed by Sir Arthur Evans in 1941 (WA 1941.6). Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford walls of an old Venetian house in Zante’ (Evans 1943, 364). Hence this group of pictures had come from a family collection on the Ionian island of Zante (Zakynthos), and had been in the same dealer’s shop in Athens when Evans visited there in 1907. This rather beautiful St Catherine of Alexandria is presently somewhat dark and grimy (Figure 3). Wearing an elaborate jewelled headdress and crown, the aristocratic saint turns to point towards a bloodstained sword with an ornately wrought hilt, the final instrument of her martyrdom, while she holds a martyr’s palm in her right hand. Her attribute of a broken wheel is visible below left. The figure, lit from the right, is set within a painted oval, as though within a reliquary frame. The picture may have been one of a series of half‑length saints in similar settings. The old label on the frame has

the attribution: ‘Giovanni Luteri‑Dosso Dossi (formerly in Zante)’. This attribution was no doubt based on perceived affinities with some expressive half-length female figures by Dosso Dossi (Tramuschio c. 1486-Ferrara 1542) that are brilliantly coloured and set against dark backgrounds. In fact, the Ashmolean painting can be securely attributed to a still little-known baroque artist, Pietro Paolini (Lucca 1603-81), who studied under the brilliantly inventive Angelo Caroselli in Rome, and was greatly impressed by the northern European followers of Caravaggio who were active in Rome in the 1620s. After a sojourn in Venice from c. 1628-30, Paolini settled in his native Lucca, specializing in allegorical and musical subjects and exploring the new subject of still-life painting. He developed an original and distinctive style and was an important teacher. An erudite 64

Catherine Whistler; Collecting the overlooked

Figure 4: Giovanni Marracci (1637-1703), The Idolatry of Solomon, oil on canvas, 90 x 66cms. Bequeathed by Sir Arthur Evans in 1941 (WA 1941.8). Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor The fact that the Solomon and the St Catherine can now be convincingly attributed to two Lucchese artists, whose names fell into obscurity in the nineteenth century, suggests at least the possibility that they might have been at some point in the same collection in Lucca. Hence they could have remained together until acquired by Evans. Whether they and the Hagar and Ishmael were all lurking in the same Athens shop in 1907, having previously been in Zakynthos in a house associated with the island’s Venetian past is only conjectural. In any event, it is certain that Evans’s instinctive curiosity, his eye for a darkened painting and his lack of concern for the fashionable has left the Ashmolean with a fine and attractive group of baroque paintings, by artists whose reputations have only recently emerged from obscurity.

artist, Paolini counted poets and intellectuals amongst his friends and a variety of verses were written in his honour. A third painting from Evans’s bequest, Solomon and the Idols (Figure 4) may also have come from the same source as the St Catherine and the Hagar and Ishmael. An old label on the frame records that it came ‘From Zante’: while this may simply document a (possibly erroneous) family tradition, I find it intriguing that the painting also turns out to be by a relatively obscure artist based in Lucca, Giovanni Marracci (Torcigliano di Camaiore 1637-Lucca 1703), whose work has only recently become a topic for research. Evans may have found some of the all’antica details in this painting attractive. Solomon kneels and burns incense in worship of an idol, accompanied by female attendants, his ‘strange wives’ as recorded in the Old Testament (I Kings 11:7-8). Praised for his wisdom by the Queen of Sheba, Solomon had amassed great wealth and was renowned for the prosperity of his domain and the richness of his palace and its ornaments. However, he was seduced by his many wives and concubines towards idolatry, doing evil in the sight of the Lord by building temples and altars to the false gods of his wives, and was duly punished. This Old Testament subject was especially in vogue in the seventeenth century: although it strikes a strong moralizing note, it allows for splendour and magnificence in both setting and details. The composition ultimately derives from Pietro da Cortona, whose painting of the 1620s in the Palazzo Mattei, Rome, was popular with various artists. The same design of a stage-like setting articulated with classical columns is found in mid and late seventeenth-century versions of the subject by Florentine artists such as Pietro Dandini or Antonio Franchi.

Bibliography Evans, J. 1943. Time and Chance, Arthur Evans and his Forbears. London, Longmans, Green. MacGregor, A. 2008. Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century. New Haven and London, Yale University Press. Ripa, C. 1992. Iconologia, ed. P. Buscaroli. Milan, Neri Pozza. Sitwell, O. 1925 Introduction. In Catalogue of an Exhibition of Italian Art of the Seventeenth Century. London, Burlington Fine Arts Club.

Evans’s painting was attributed to Sebastiano Conca (Gaeta 1676-Rome 1764) when it was bequeathed to the Ashmolean, however it was clear by the 1980s when scholarship of the Roman and Neapolitan baroque was more advanced that the picture had nothing to do with Conca. After much searching through the work of Tuscan followers of Cortona, it became evident to me that Giovanni Marracci was the author of this very attractive painting. The same treatment of the architectural and sculptural setting and the predilection for figures in profile and lost profile with strongly shadowed faces can be found in documented works by that artist, while even the all’antica details of smoking altar and draped ewer turn up in other paintings. Almost all of Marracci’s paintings are still in Lucca, except for some altar-pieces that were commissioned for churches in other cities, and a small handful of pictures that have ended up in museum or private collections. After training in Rome with Pietro da Cortona, Marracci spent his entire career in Lucca from c. 1662, specializing in religious subjects. The Ashmolean picture must have been a private commission as a richly-handled cabinet painting, perhaps for a patron in that city. Marracci was described by Luigi Lanzi in the late eighteenth century as one of the best pupils and imitators of Pietro da Cortona, whose work was little-known outside Lucca, a situation which remains true today. 66

Collections, sculpture and the changing fortunes of an eighteenth-century portrait bust Malcolm Baker Abstract This paper dealing with the collecting history of British portrait sculpture explores the changing fortunes of a single portrait bust which has at various times enjoyed celebrity and been lost in obscurity while its identity and attribution have been asserted, doubted, challenged and reconsidered. Sold at the 1848 Stowe sale as a bust of Prior by Roubiliac and purchased by Robert Peel, the bust later disappeared and was eventually acquired by the V&A as a portrait of George Pitt by Henry Cheere. Doubts about its identity and Peel’s naivety as a collector were registered in a poem of around 1850 which is transcribed and discussed here. Keywords bust; Stowe; L. F. Roubiliac; Henry Cheere; George Pitt

As any reader of Curiosity and Enlightenment (MacGregor, 2007) will know, the collecting and display of sculpture figure prominently within the history of collections, as this emergent field has been shaped over the past thirty years by Arthur MacGregor and the Journal of the History of Collections. The collecting of the Arundel marbles and their subsequent acquisition by the Ashmolean Museum were turning points in the history of collecting and museums in Britain. Likewise, the enthusiasm shown by successive Renaissance popes for works such as the Belvedere Torso and the subsequent display of these papal acquisitions within the newly established Museo Pio-Clementino form an important part of those developments which resulted in the Enlightenment museum. But the sculpture which plays such a significant role in this history has been primarily antique sculpture. Certainly, the collecting and display of small-scale Renaissance bronzes has attracted increasing attention (Penny and Schmidt, 2008). Yet the collecting of later sculpture in other media has, as yet, been relatively little explored. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of eighteenth-century British sculpture. Of course, many of the major achievements of sculptors working in Britain during this period, of course, took the form of monuments and so, as works which remain in situ in churches, are usually (and properly) uncollectable, unless we regard the array of monuments in Westminster Abbey or the clusters of monuments in the family chapels of numerous parish churches as collections. There is, however, one important eighteenth-century sculptural genre which has always been portable and eminently displayable in the context of either the private domestic space or the public museum – the portrait bust. This essay examines the history of one particular (and unusually well-documented) bust and its changing fortunes as it passed from its original owner, through various dealers and private collectors and finally entered a public collection. As well as having (like the dedicatee of this volume) spent some time in Edinburgh, this sculpture has at various times enjoyed celebrity and

been lost in obscurity, just as its identity and attribution have been confidently asserted, doubted, challenged and reconsidered. Indeed its varied afterlife, both as a collected object and as a subject of art historical speculation, might illustrate the relationship between the history of collecting and the historiography of art, as this has operated within the field of British sculpture. The marble bust in question (Fig. 1) was given a prominent place in K. A. Esdaile’s pioneering monograph on Louis François Roubiliac – one of the earliest to have been devoted to an eighteenth-century British sculptor – in which it was described as a bust of the poet Matthew Prior by Roubiliac (Esdaile, 1928, 52) and praised in the following terms: For sheer power of characterization it may rank with the Hogarth itself, and the details of its execution, the bravura of the loose cap, the drapery arranged over a frogged coat, and the fluttering ribbons which tied the shirt in pre-stud days, are as realistic as they are decorative. Apart from referring to a formal (and still somewhat Edwardian) mode of men’s dress by way of comparison, Esdaile’s account is unusual for its period in showing such enthusiasm for such a British eighteenth-century portrait sculpture. Some busts of this date had already been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery but primarily on account of the sitters they represented. Of course, British painted portraits of this period had been attracting the attention of both British and American collectors in the 1890s and publications such as Country Life (established in 1897) were encouraging interest in English country houses during the first decade of the twentieth century. At the Victoria & Albert Museum a new interest was being shown in British art during the 1920s and the outcome of this was not only the development of the collections

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor were described at some length in both auction catalogues and accounts of those collections they had either left or entered. Few were mentioned with more enthusiasm than the bust about which Esdaile was to write so vividly. On 21 August 1848 this same bust had appeared as lot 751 in the sixth day of the Stowe sale (Christie and Manson, 1848). One of the most celebrated sales of the nineteenth century, the Stowe sale attracted unprecedented interest, not least from a public making used of the newly installed railway line to witness the downfall of a bankrupt aristocrat – Richard, 2nd Duke of Buckingham - formerly known for his profligate spending and exceptionally magnificent mode of living. During the 1730s Stowe and its gardens, of course, had been established by Richard Temple, Earl Cobham, as what was later to be understood as a site in which sculpture of various sorts was to play a prominent role, articulating the political loyalties and ideology of the Whig landowner and his ‘patriot boys’. While much of the garden sculpture – the Temple of British Worthies, for instance - remained in place, at least until the early twentieth century, some of the portrait sculptures were dispersed in the 1848 sale. These included the busts of Cobham and associates that had been executed by Peter Scheemakers and others for the Temple of Friendship. But along with these images were also some sculptural portraits acquired only a short time earlier by the Duke of Buckingham, including lot 751. The catalogue entry for the bust described it proudly as ‘A bust of Prior – an exquisite work of Roubiliac, on a square pedestal of different marbles’. But the esteem in which the work was held, both on account of the sitter – Matthew Prior remained a prominent figure in the English poetical canon in the early nineteenth century – and the sculptor was also registered in another contemporary publication about the Stowe sale. This consisted of a series of articles about the sale in the Illustrated London News where a number of the more important works were illustrated, including the bust of Prior (Anonymous, 1848). Details of each day’s sale had been published in daily articles in The Times but the articles in the Illustrated London News were still more extensive and made more vivid by illustrations of the house, grounds and, of course, the most outstanding pieces being sold. The sale of the bust of Prior is described in the following terms (Anonymous 1848, 124):

Figure 1 Bust, marble. Formerly known as Matthew Prior by Louis François Roubiliac, and now identified as George Pitt, attributed to Henry Cheere, about 1738. (Victoria and Albert Museum)

of English furniture and silver but also the publication of studies of English art which included Margaret Longhurst’s English Ivories (1927), William Thorpe’s English and Irish Glass (1929), Basil Long’s British Miniaturists (1929) and A.G.I Christie’s English Medieval Embroidery (1938). But the Museum’s present position as the major national collection of British eighteenth-century sculpture had yet to be established, as British art only slowly became more prominent at South Kensington (Saumarez Smith, 1998, 275-283). Not until 1933 was a room devoted to British sculpture, including portrait busts.1 During the 1920s and 30s eighteenth-century sculpture – especially British portrait busts – was the preserve of a few passionate enthusiasts, led by Esdaile, whose work was followed in the post-war period by Rupert Gunnis, Marjorie Webb, Terence Hodgkinson and Margaret Whinney (Baker, 2004a; Baker, 2004b). This marginalization of British sculptural portraiture was, however, a relatively recent phenomenon. Earlier, and especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, such busts attracted keen attention and

The bust of Prior (lot 751) excited much notice, and the biddings for it were very spirited – Mr. Graves of Pall-Mall endeavouring to gain it against the biddings of the auctioneer who was understood to have a commission from Sir Robert Peel; Sir Robert, however, became the purchaser for the sum of 130 guineas, and the bust will be highly prized by him, as he has in collection the companion bust of Pope, which originally belonged to Mr. Bindley of the Stamp Office. This bust [presumably the Prior] is one of the best works of the famous Roubiliac, and has, perhaps, never been surpassed for delicacy of chiseling and

I shall be exploring the collecting and historiography of British portrait busts more fully in a further article. 1

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Malcolm Baker: Collections, sculpture and the changing fortunes of an eighteenth-century portrait bust truly characteristic expression. It forms the subject of one of our illustrations. As reported, the bust was purchased for 130 guineas by Sir Robert Peel who had to outbid some determined rivals (Mordaunt Crook, 1966). By this date Peel was wellknown not only as a political figure but as a voracious and discerning collector. His paintings collection, especially strong in Dutch art and displayed in his town house at 4 Whitehall Gardens, was described in some detail by Waagen (1854, I, 396) and an even fuller account of this was published in The Art Union in 1846. (Anonymous, 1846). The Dutch paintings were purchased for the National Gallery in 1871. But some ten years before the publication of the Art Union’s article, Peel had developed a still more impressive display of paintings and sculpture at Drayton Manor where paintings by Old Masters such as Rembrandt, Poussin, and Ruysdael were displayed in the Old Gallery – ‘part of a suite of state apartments, rather than a picture gallery’ – along with modern works by Wilkie, Mulready and Landseer. But in 1845 Peel added a New Gallery, ‘constructed expressly for the reception of a collection of portraits of eminent persons’, including no less than fourteen by Sir Thomas Lawrence (Anonymous, 1846, 303). It was at Drayton Manor that the newly acquired bust of Prior was set up, but not with the painted portraits in the New Gallery. Instead it was placed in the Old Gallery along with some other important sculptural portraits of ‘distinguished persons’, which included Chantrey’s bust of Queen Victoria and a version of the same sculptor’s Sir Walter Scott (Anonymous, 1846, 305). According to Chantrey in a letter to Peel about the latter, ‘I finished from his [Scott’s] face the marble bust now at Drayton Manor – a better sanctuary than my studio, else I would not have parted with it’ (Potts, 1991, 136-7). But just as admired as these was Roubiliac’s bust of Pope (today in the Yale Center for British Art), purchased by Peel at Watson Taylor’s sale in 1832 and at first displayed in the own house and then moved to Drayton Manor (Fig. 2). The bust was already celebrated when in Watson Taylor’s collection and Peel was exultant about securing it along with busts of Dryden and Johnson, writing to his friend John Wilson Croker on 10 August 1832: ‘I give you joy! Pope-Dryden-Johnson for £300! … I should have given £300 for the Pope alone. It is to my taste, the finest bit of marble which I ever saw’ (Jennings, 1884, II, 189; Wimsatt, 1965, 246). It seems that the bust of Prior by Roubiliac was acquired and displayed as the companion to this same bust and, as we shall, the two were long regarded as a pair which Peel re-united.

Figure 2. Bust, marble. Alexander Pope by Louis Françoise Roubiliac, signed and dated 1741. (Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Paul Mellon in memory of the British art historian Basil Taylor, 1922-1975)

two busts were not only considered as companions but were both understood to have come from Stowe. Although the price of neither rivaled that of Chantrey’s Scott, which fetched the astonishingly high figure of £2250, each of the two busts was sold for a high sum, the Prior for £550 and the Pope for £510. (Marbles of Wiliam Pitt and Lord Chesterfield from Stowe – almost certainly those by Scheemakers formerly in the Temple of Friendship – were sold for £105 and £26 respectively.) At this point the two were separated with the Pope being bought by Agnew, and then sold by them to Lord Rosebery, and the Prior going to Duveen. From Duveen the bust of Prior passed into a private collection in which it was seen by Mrs Esdaile who published it in her 1928 monograph on Roubiliac, describing it in the terms already quoted above. But its later history differs markedly from that of the bust of Pope. The latter was to remain celebrated, appearing subsequently on the dust cover of W.K. Wimsatt’s Portraits of Alexander Pope (Wimsatt, 1965) and given admiring attention in Margaret Whinney’s Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830 (Whinney, 1964) . By contrast, the Prior disappeared from sight, only

The Drayton Manor collection was sold at the Peel Heirlooms sale in 1900 (Robinson & Fisher, 1900), an event which attracted much publicity in both Britain and the United States. Prior to the sale an article about the collection in The Times commented that the ‘statuary is scarcely second in importance to the paintings’ and erroneously refers to ‘Roubiliac’s busts of Prior, the poet, and of Pope, both from the Stowe collection’ (Anonymous, 1899). As the entries in the sale catalogue make clear, the 69

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor to reappear in the early1980s when it was on sale in an Edinburgh dealer’s shop, with its subject unidentified and its sculptor unknown. There it was seen by John Pinkerton, an Edinburgh advocate and antiquarian. As the author of a fine article about Roubiliac’s statue of Lord President Forbes, in Edinburgh’s Parliament Hall (Pinkerton, 1973), Pinkerton was familiar with the bust from Esdaile and purchased it as Roubiliac’s bust of Prior by Roubiliac. He subsequently consigned it to Christie’s, who proposed to catalogue it as such, while he at the same time approached the V&A about the possibility of a private treaty sale. At this time, the Museum’s British sculpture included a remarkable range of models by Roubiliac, along with the celebrated figure of Handel and the terracotta bust of Jonathan Tyers, but lacked any marble bust by the sculptor. With the opportunity to acquire the Prior there was a possibility of representing properly the work of the foremost exponent of the portrait bust in the eighteenth century.

master whose name appears in the catalogue. When brought forward, the attention of every one present was immediately directed to it: the biddings commenced with great spirit, and were carried on until after the price had reached 100 guineas. From this point, Mr. Graves, of Pall Mall (on behalf of the Rt. Hon. H. Labouchere) struggled hard for its possession with the auctioneer, who held a commission from Sir Robert Peel. It was ultimately knocked down to the latter at the large sum of 130 guineas. The bust has some vicissitudes: it was bought by Mr. Street, of Brewer Street, at the sale of Mr. Moreton Pitt’s effects, in Dorsetshire, for £20. Mr. Street kept if for some time at his shop in Wardour Street; and, while in his possession, it was offered to Sir Robert Peel for £30. The right honourable baronet declining the purchase, Mr. Webb, of Bond Street, bought it, and subsequently disposed of it to the Duke of Buckingham for £60. Sir Robert Peel will no doubt prize its possession very highly, the right honourable baronet’s collection already containing a companion bust of Pope, which originally belonged to Mr. Bindley, of the Stamp Office, and subsequently to Mr. Watson Taylor.

As the V&A considered Pinkerton’s offer, Esdaile’s discussion of the marble as an important early bust by Roubiliac was re-assessed. Though having a long and distinguished provenance, linking the bust with the names of Prior and Roubiliac, there were questions about both. The identity of the sitter seemed to have been more based on the soft cap and informal dress of the sitter being associated with images of poets (and in particular with Coysevox’s bust of Prior on Rysbrack’s monument in Westminster Abbey) than on any resemblance of the features to those on documented images of the poet. More telling still was the disparity in he manner of carving between this bust and that seen on early documented busts by Roubiliac, such as those of Handel and, indeed, Pope, despite the supposed re-uniting of the two poets’ busts of which Peel was so proud.

Apart from both tracking the bust’s movements and indicating that there was already some doubt about the work’s authorship in 1848, Forster’s additional note included information about the bust’s earlier ownership that was to open another line of enquiry.2 Moreton Pitt had been a member of the Dorset family of Pitt family, another branch of the same family to which the primeministers had belonged. The possibility that this bust represented not Prior but a member of the Pitt family led to the family estates at Kingston Maurward and the adjacent parish church at Stinsford. Among the various family monuments there was one to George Pitt of Stratfieldsaye which incorporated another version of the bust of the socalled Prior (Fig. 3). Inheriting the Hampshire estate of Stratfieldsaye from his father, George Pitt had been M.P for various Dorset and Hampshire constituencies until shortly before his death in 1735. Through his second wife, Lora Grey, he acquired the estate of Kingston Maurward, near Dorchester, passing this to his eldest son, William, while the year before his death he purchased the nearby estate of Encombe for his second son, John (Marsden, 1976). Interestingly, John, distinguished architect in his own right, seems to have been involved in the commissioning and designing of the bust since the 2nd edition of Hutchins’ History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset describes the monument (somewhat ambiguously) as having ‘a neat bust of Mr. Pitt in white marble executed from a model made after his death from recollection by his son John Pitt, Esq.’ (Hutchins, 1863, II, 567). 3 Far from being an

At the same time, the provenance itself was re-examined, through a closer reading not of the brief description in Christie’s Stowe sale catalogue itself but of the entry in the enlarged and heavily annotated edition of the catalogue published shortly after the sale (Forster,1848; Baker, 2007) . A volume which both memorialised the collection and took commercial advantage of the widespread public interest in the Stowe sale, this was the work of Henry Rumsey Forster, a journalist and author of books on royalty and the aristocracy, who had himself covered the sale for the Morning Post. As well as incorporating the illustrations used earlier in the Illustrated London News, Forster’s annotated catalogue in many cases followed the original catalogue entries with extended, discursive additional texts. These additions in part recounted events at the auction and reported on the rivalry between bidders but they sometimes also included significant details about provenance. No entry was more revealing than that for Lot 751 describing Roubiliac’s bust of Prior (Forster, 1848, 48):

In moving from Street to Webb and so from a dealer in Wardour Street to one in Bond Street, the bust ‘s trajectory was in line with what the late Clive Wainright saw as the move of “the smart end of the trade” from the former to the latter (Wainwright, 1986). For John Webb (who played a major role in the formation of the V&A ‘s collection of medieval ivories) see C. Wainwright, 2002. 3 Almost all the copies of the 2nd edition of Hutchins’ text were destroyed but his additions to the original 1774 text, which include a 2

This bust is certainly one of the finest and most lifelike marbles ever executed, though doubts have been expressed as to whether it is really the work of the great 70

Malcolm Baker: Collections, sculpture and the changing fortunes of an eighteenth-century portrait bust

3. Monument, marble, to George Pitt, attributed to Henry Cheere, about 1738. (St Michael’s, Stinsford) image of the poet Prior, the bust sold at Stowe was another version of a bust commemorating a Dorset landowner and a minor member of a political family. But what of the attribution to Roubiliac?

described the bust’s original pedestal as being ‘of different coloured marbles’ (Forster, 1848, 48). According to the entries in the Pitt bank account at Hoare’s Bank (Ledger 0, fol. 254; Ledger P, fols. 132 and 372) a payment of £50 was indeed made to Henry Cheere by Lora, George Pitt’s widow, on 8 August 1738 and two further payments (of £50 and £46-8-0 respectively) were recorded on 28 February 1739 and 4 April 1741. While these may have been for other types of work, such as the chimneypieces which were another of Cheere’s specialities, the sums involved make it plausible that these were payments for the monument and another bust intended for the house, either at Kingston Maurward or at Encombe.

Just as the bust corresponds to Roubiliac’s portraits in neither format nor execution, so the monument bears no resemblance to any of Roubiliac’s smaller wall monuments, all of which have very distinctive features. Instead, its design follows a pattern well-known from James Gibbs’ Book of Architecture of 1728. This had been used elsewhere by sculptors such as Michael Rysbrack but the Piit monument differs from Rysbrack’s work in its use of coloured marble and floral swags. These two latter features are, however, characteristic of monuments produced in the workshop of Henry Cheere, albeit usually on works of his own design. Significantly, the Stowe catalogue also

Some of the details given in Forster’s note about the bust’s history before entering the Stowe collection, as well a further hint about the uncertainty surrounding the work and its attribution, are echoed in another source from around 1848. This took the form of a satirical poem (Appendix) which mocked Peel and his art collecting and related how he had

fuller description of the moneument to George Pitt, were incorporated into the 1863 edition.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor turned the bust down twice before purchasing it a still higher price at the Stowe sale. The poem begins with how this ‘Chef d’ouevre of Roubilliac [sic] / Sans flaw, sans chip, sans stain, or crack’ appeared with the dealer Street and how ‘all, save one, pronounced it good’. Invited by the dealer, ‘Sir R--------‘ ,(described as ‘correct and just’ in taste, as well as ‘liberal and rich’) , arrives to see the bust, ‘Its authenticity does doubt, / And so resolves to go without / The bargain, which did then appear, / At Fifty Pounds, by far too dear.” Seen again by the Premier, the bust ‘was not yet quite good enough, / Twas still a dealers’ [sic] therefore stuff”. Then after the Duke of Buckingham ‘in passing had the luck, / To see this doubtful Bust’, ‘He could at once its beautie feel, / Far better judge was he than P----.’ Having been acquired for Stowe and then included shortly afterwards in the sale, the bust was seen by Peel in a different light.

of contemporary dress, meant that the formulation of new types of sculptural portraiture did not need to be thought of solely in terms if Rysbrack and Roubiliac. The V&A’s case for the bust’s acquisition was made on this basis and shortly after its acquisition the work was given a prominent place in the museum’s 1984 Rococo exhibition (Baker, 1984; Bilbey and Trusted, 2002, 61). The bust of ‘Prior’ first became celebrated when it entered (albeit briefly) the Stowe sale, wrongly identified as the poet. Acquired by Peel, it became still more esteemed as the pendant to Roubiliac’s bust of Pope. In both these private collections a fine British portrait bust was esteemed on account of both the supposed sitter and assumed sculptor. Over a hundred years later, it entered a public collection differently identified and attributed to another sculptor, thus representing a new aspect of eighteenth-century sculpture. By this date both the collecting of British sculpture and the writing of the history of British sculpture had changed significantly. Nowhere are these changes registered more vividly (or with such an array of documentation) than in the case of the changing fortunes of ‘Roubiliac’s bust of Prior’ or rather Henry Cheere’s bust of George Pitt.

The drap’ry now was ‘very fine,’ ‘The Sculptor shone in every line,’ For chiseling, who are undertake To vie with famed Roubilliac [sic ] Thanks to the ‘mystic hammer’ in the hands of the ‘brazen auctioneer’, ‘things, before despised, rejected, / Become much prized, admired, respected.’

Appendix

This anonymous poem, apparently published shortly after the Stowe sale and known only from a single printed sheet tipped into one of the National Art Library’s copies of Forster’s annotated catalogue not only belongs to the many satirical attacks on Peel, both verbal and visual. It also illustrates the relationship between dealers, auction houses and collectors in the mid nineteenth century. For our purposes, however, it tellingly registers the air of doubt surrounding the bust’s authorship and significance.

This anonymous poem was printed as a single sheet, one copy of which was inserted in a copy of Forster’s Stowe Catalogue in the National Art Library (Pressmark 23.S) LINES WRITTEN ON THE BUST OF PRIOR, BY ROUBILLIAC, WHICH WAS RECENTLY PURCHASED BY SIR R------ P----------, AT STOWE FOR ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY GUINEAS, AFTER HAVING REFUSED TO GIVE FIFTY POUNDS FOR IT, TO A DEALER

The bust’s afterlife following its sale at the Peel Heirlooms sale and its publication in Esdaile’s monograph might at first seem to have reversed the trajectory described in the poem. Having been ‘much prized, admired, respected’, the bust reappeared in the 1980s only to have its identity and attribution rejected. But if the attribution to Roubiliac was shown to be erroneous, the re-identification of the bust as Henry Cheere’s portrait of George Pitt opened up the possibility of seeing the history of British eighteenthcentury sculpture in a different way. Though almost entirely ignored by George Vertue, Cheere was by the 1980s being recognized as a sculptor whose workshop produced both a large number of monuments to be placed n churches throughout the country and the elaborate chimney pieces for some of the finest interiors of the period. What was far less clear was his role as a portrait sculptor and the re-attribution of the “Prior” bust prompted a new look at this. Examples of Cheere’s portraits were not hard to find as many of his more ambitious monuments included them. Indeed, comparison of the ‘Prior’ bust with images such as that of Sir Orlando Humphreys on his monument at Barking (with its similar flying tie) formed one argument for the attribution to Cheere. But the emergence of an independent portrait bust, as well as one which made bravura use of the details

Five Years have passed since Francis Street, With Bust of Prior chanced to meet, Chef’oeuvre of Roubilliac, [sic] Sans flaw, sans chip, sans stain, or crack; On pedestal antique, it stood, And all, save one, pronounced it good. Eh man (a Scot said), ye’ll do weel, To do drop a Note to R_____ P--------, For he’s the man to buy your Bust, His taste is so correct and just, Besides, he’s liberal and rich, ‘Tis very rare we meet with sich. The dealer writes, Sir R------ comes, He views the Bust, then ha’s and hums, Its authenticity does doubt, And so resolves to go without The bargain, which did then appear, 72

Malcolm Baker: Collections, sculpture and the changing fortunes of an eighteenth-century portrait bust At Fifty Pounds, by far too dear. A tradesman, who resided nigh, Was going past, it caught his eye, He ask’d the price; at once he bought it, So very good and true he thought it, And in his shop in Bond Street stood it. So proud was he, of such a “good hit”. Arrived in Bond Street, Matthew Prior, His head was now raised ten pounds higher, So that the price upon it fixt he “Known to all men, be it”, was sixty. Again the Premier went and viewed it, Again the price asked and eschewed it, It was not yet good enough, ‘Twas still a dealers therefore stuff, Mere rubbish, till his Grace of Buckingham, in passing had the luck, To see this doubtful Bust, and lo! He bought, and sent it off to Stowe; He could its beauties feel, Far better judge was he than P----. Well, time rolled on, as time will do, And busts got scarce, and money too, So scarce at Stowe, that duns got sore, By Constant Knocking at the door, And finding out they got no tin, At once determined to break in. The clamorous duns did then prevail, On Noble Duke to have a Sale, And once again, the Poet Prior, Whose head was held up now much higher, For since his Grace the Duke of Bucks did own him, His dearest friend would scarce have known him. The drap’ry now was “very fine,” “The Sculptor shone in every line”, For chiseling, who dare undertake To vie with famed Roubilliac [sic] ? Besides (although it seems romantic) The air of Stowe made it authentic. So much so that Sir R----- P----Its truth and beauty now could feel. A sale so grand is rare, No wonder “all the world” was there; But not your time too long to waste, I’ll tell you that this “Man of Taste” And Arts’ most liberal patronizer In marble busts, has now grown wiser. Currency’s a different question,

And not so easy of digestion, Would that in pictures he’d been rational, When cat’ring for the Gallery National, As England’s Premier Dilettanti An bought Corregio De la Hante.* Let mystic hammer once appear, In hands of brazen auctioneer, It dazzles many a noble Peer, And op’s the eyes of ex-P-------, That things, before despised, rejected, Become much prized, admired, respected. Whilst those in hands of tradesmen humble, At which the mean, though rich men, grumble, As “not being good,” and ”much too high,” Are viewed at sales with different eye; And so our Bust was seen no doubt, For in the shop ‘twas not “set out” With all th’advantages of Stowe. And therefore could not be “too low.” But at an auction any price Is cheap, all things seem so nice, No wonder that the Baronet, Was there resolved the Bust to get. Full thirty pounds above a hundred, The Bust had reached, some stared and wondered, But when knocked down, to him at Guineas, P----- chuckled at the cautious ninnies, And said, “Two hundred he’d have given, If by opponent he’d been driven.” L’ENVOY Each auction room is now a College, Where bargain-hunters purchase knowledge, And the true value’s hit upon, By going! going! going! gone! – For since “the worth of anything, Is just as much as it will bring,” And duty saved of five per cent, The purchaser must be content, In this the art of wisdom lies, Dear bought experience makes us wide, “Death, Bankruptcy, and Dissipation,” Is Auctioneers’ chief elevation.

73

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Bibliography

Wainwright, C. 1986. Curiosities to fine art: Bond Street’s first dealers. Country Life 179, 1528-9. Wainwright, C. 2002. The Making of the South Kensington Museum IV. Relationships with the trade: Webb and Bardini. Journal of the History of Collections 14, 6378. Waagen, G. F. 1854. Treasures of Art in Great Britain. London, John Murray. Whinney, M. 1964. Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830. Hardmondsworth, Penguin Books. Wimsatt, W.K. 1965. The Portraits of Alexander Pope. New Haven, Yale University Press.

Anonymous. 1846. Visits to Private Galleries No. XVII. The Art Union, 1846, 303-5. Anonymous, 1848. The Sale of Stowe. In Illustrated London News, 26 August, 2, 9, 16, 23 September, 1848. Anonymous. 1899. The Peel Collection at Drayton Manor. The Times. 21 July 1899. Baker, M. 1984. George Pitt MP. In M. Snodin (ed.), Rococo. Art and Design in Hogarth’s England, 288. London, Trefoil Books and Victoria and Albert Museum Baker, M. 2004a. Katharine Ada Esdaile. In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, Oxford University Press. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/33026) Baker, M. 2004b. Terence William Ivan Hodgkinson. In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, Oxford University Press . (http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/73018) Baker, M. 2007. The Cult of the Catalogue: Representing the Fonthill, Stowe, and Hamilton Palace Collections. In R. Panzanelli and M. Preti-Hamard (eds), La Circulation des oeuvres d’art 1789-1848, 201-210. Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes Bilbey D. and Trusted, M. 2002. British Sculpture 1470 to 2000. London, V&A Publications. Christie and Manson. 1848. Catalogue of the Contents of Stowe House … Tuesday, August, 1848, London. Esdaile, K. A. 1928. The Life and Works of Louis Francois Roubiliac, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Forster, H.R. 1848. The Stowe Catalogue Priced and Annotated. London, D. Bogue. Hutchins, J. 1863. The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset. Westminster: John Bowyer Nichols, II567Jennings, L. J. (ed) 1884. The Croker Papers. London, John Murray. MacGregor, A. 2007. Curiosity and Enlightenment: collectors and collections from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. New Haven and London, Yale U.P. Marsden, E. 1976. John Pitt of Encombe. Country Life 160, 662-665 Mordaunt Crook, J. 1966. Sir Robert Peel. Patron of the Arts. History Today 16, 3-11. Penny N. and Schmidt E.D., (eds.) 2008. Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe, Washington D.C, National Gallery of Art. Pinkerton, J. 1973. Roubiliac’s Statue of Lord President Forbes. The Connoisseur 183, 274-279. Potts, A. 1991. Sir Walter Scott’s Bust. In A. Yarrington (ed.), An Edition of the Ledger of Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A., at the Royal Academy, 1809-1841, The Walpole Society, 56, 136-7. Robinson & Fisher. 1900. A Catalogue of the Peel Heirlooms … On Thursday, May 10th, 1900. London. Saumarez Smith, C. National Consciousness, National Heritage, and the Idea of ‘Englishness’. In M. Baker and B. Richardson (ed.), A Grand Design, 275-283. New York, Abrams. 275-283

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A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present Julian Munby Abstract The great variety of displays, exhibitions and collections shown in Oxford museums and other institutions over the last four hundred years exemplifies the many forms that museums can take in a university town. This is an attempt to provide an outline census of existing and former ‘museums’ in Oxford, of which over fifty have been identified. These range from the formal galleries of the University, including the oldest one in the University Schools, teaching collections of departments and colleges, to private and ecclesiastical collections and establishments run by public authorities. Keywords Oxford Museums, Bodleian Library, Ashmolean Museum, Arundel Marbles, Natural history collections, Antiquities collections, Coin collections, Cast collections.

Introduction

the last worn in Oxford – is kept at Magdalen; Johnson’s teapot at Pembroke; and at Brasenose the eponymous brass door knocker brought back from Stamford). The remarkable collection of pre-reformation religious banners in St John’s College have had an occasional outing.

The recent closure of the ‘Oxford Story’ has served as a reminder that museums and public displays of art, history and antiquities have no greater lifespan than the whims of the public or private purse that indulges them. Even the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford’s heroic survivor from 1685 has, like some ancient family in a country seat, survived by prudent marriage and descent in the female line, masked by timely changes of name; meanwhile choosing to forget the claims of its aunt, the University Galleries, to have preceded it as the first public collection displayed in Oxford.

Colleges’ collections might have a didactic element, for example coin cabinets, while scientific instruction could be served by the herbaria and astronomical instruments (astrolabes, globes and orreries deposited in college libraries (Piggott 1986, 759; Gunther 1923b, passim; 1925, 206-20, 342). More general collections of curiosities also existed, that of St Johns being ‘worth a detour’ for 17thcentury visitors, and contained serious anatomical items and fossils amongst other items. Celia Fiennes was shown in 1695 the thigh-bone of John the Baptist, stones, hats and birds, and a six-legged lamb born on Port Meadow. By the time of the 1749 printed catalogue the monstrous lamb now had seven feet, but the head of Charles I composed of the whole book of Psalms was still there, along with 30 smooth pebbles taken from a cow (Piggott 1986; Gunther 1925, 336). To this was later added the fascinating, systematic and wide-ranging collection of John Pointer (1668-1754), former Chaplain of Merton and unsuccessful candidate for the Keepership of the Ashmolean in 1729. Housed in two chests of drawers and provided with a full catalogue enumerating over 150 contributing benefactors, much of this had been lost by the early 20th century: apart from a world of natural specimens, its antiquarian highlights included a fragment of the Stonesfield pavement (a particular concern of Pointer’s in his pamphlet war with Thomas Hearne), and part of the walls of Troy (Gunther 1925 338, App. E; ODNB Pointer art.).

The story of the museums of Oxford has not, I believe, been told before, though the Tradescant and Ashmolean collections have been ably treated by Arthur MacGregor and others (MacGregor 1983). The story, if told properly, would require extensive research and what is offered here is just an outline of the most salient facts. The resulting enumeration of the more obvious collections and displays in Oxford may surprise some and, it is to be hoped, prompt others to go further. College Collections One large sub-topic, the numerous and extraordinary collections of the Oxford colleges, is worth a glance, in the absence of fuller treatment. Rightly regarded as treasures rather than museum objects, portraits and college plate are more likely to be seen by their members when dining than by visiting members of the public. College portraits were included in a pioneering catalogue that is now due for a reworking (Poole 1912), while the college plate of Oxford has been periodically displayed to the amazement of successive generations (Watts 1928; Goldsmiths 1953; Clifford 2004).

In a class of its own is the Guise collection of pictures at Christ Church, an unusually fine accumulation of paintings and old master drawings bequeathed to the college in 1765, open to public view from early days, and since 1968 housed in a purpose-built gallery. A Rowlandson print of 1807 depicts ‘Mrs Showwell. The Woman who shows General Guise collection of Pictures at Oxford’, suitably attired in hat and apron, and carrying a pointing stick (Grego 1880, II, 66).

Piety demanded the retention of the founder’s treasures and the mementoes of distinguished alumni: Wykeham’s mitre and boots at New College, Waynflete’s buskins at Magdalen; the cardinal’s hat of Wolsey at Christ Church (from Walpole’s renowned Strawberry Hill collection), or the regalia of later notables: (President Routh’s wig – 75

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor A passing mention should also be made of architectural models, a somewhat disregarded aspect of Oxford’s history, and often providing embarrassment for librarians and archivists before they achieve the interest of old age. University college has claim to the oldest, a popup cardboard model of the proposed new quad made in c.1634. The Radcliffe Camera has no less than two, a wooden model made by Smallwell of Hawksmoor’s 1734 rotunda, and a stone model of the Gibbs’ dome - now the roof of a summer house in The Judge’s Lodging, St Giles, (Colvin 1983; Vaisey 1998). The models are numerous and deserve listing - from the Thomas Sharp model of ‘Oxford Replanned’ in the Museum of Oxford to various models of buildings plans both realised and merely proposed that are to be found lying around in colleges and university departments. Most poignant are the confident buildings that never were of the 1960s - the Zoology tower block and the amazing glass dome for the Pitt Rivers Museum in the Banbury Road (Colvin 1983).

lectures being rather more worthwhile than the elaborate and faintly ludicrous Millenary Pageant performed on the Magdalen School field (Oxford 1912). The ‘Treasures of Oxford’ displayed at the Goldsmiths’ Hall, London in Coronation Year included a wide range of objects from the University and colleges in addition to plate (Goldsmiths 1953). A more recent outing of remarkable documents and associated items was the ‘Town and Gown’ show at the Bodleian in 1982 celebrating ‘eight hundred years of Oxford life’ (Bodleian 1982). University Museums The University Galleries The Schools Quadrangle [1] The upper reading room of what is now the Bodleian Library was planned (by Thomas Bodley in 1612) as a gallery on the upper floor of the Schools Quadrangle, a building designed for Arts and Science teaching that only gradually became part of the Library. Here were the University’s treasures, portraits, coins and prints displayed, and shown to noble visitors. A painted frieze survives that depicts notable scholars and writers in Theology, Medicine, Law, and Arts, while in the Tower Room (now the issue desk) is an inscription about the coin cabinet; above this in the tower was the university archives store, and from the roof the Savilian professor observed the heavens. From the earliest days the gallery contained curiosities and antiquities such as the Guy Fawkes lantern (presented in 1641) a chair made from Drake’s Golden Hind (given in 1668), a crocodile (1658), whale (1678) and the ‘dried body of a negro boy’ (1684). It continued to receive miscellaneous gifts of sculptures, casts and architectural models, e.g. the Earl of Pembroke’s statue, and models of the Parthenon, the Holy Sepulchre, the Martyrs’ Memorial and Calcutta Cathedral (Macray 1890, 458-82; Clark 1906, 57-70; Ovenell 1986, 189, Vaisey 1998).

Exhibitions Another topic that cannot be dealt with here in detail is the private or temporary exhibition. One-off exhibits and raree shows at Oxford inns can be found advertised in the pages of Jackson’s Oxford Journal in the late 18th century: an ostrich at The Crown or unicorn at The Chequers, a Learned Dog at the King’s Head or a Pig of Knowledge at the Crown, a dwarf at The Bell and an Irish Giant at the Chequers (Midgley 1996, 152-5). The Dancing School in Ship Street was used a regular venue for display of such items as Montgolfier’s balloon, Captain Cook’s ‘Kongeroo’, and a rather less probable Mermaid (Munby 1992, 264). Oxford never seems to have boasted a spoof coffee-house museum like Don Saltero’s ‘Knackatory’ in Chelsea, a sendup of the Sloane collection that boasted among its prize exhibits Pontius Pilate’s Wife’s Chambermaid’s Sister’s hat (de Beer 1953, 128). Perhaps the closest was that historic haunt of Thomas Hearne and his fellow antiquaries at Antiquity Hall, an alehouse in Hythe Bridge Street with a knucklebone floor serving as a Roman pavement, and itself the butt of antiquarian satire (Munby 2007).

The University Galleries, Beaumont Street [2] The expansion of the Bodleian Library into the old schools gradually eased out the exhibits on in the gallery, and a new building in Beaumont Street to house the university collection of pictures (upstairs) and sculptures (below) was opened in 1845. The University’s collection was soon enhanced by the acquisition of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s collection of Old Master drawings, purchased by subscription, and important additions by Francis Douce and John Ruskin, and important collections of paintings gifted by W.T. Fox-Strangways (1851), Chambers Hall (1855) and Mrs Thomas Combe (1894). The ‘University Galleries’ only became the Ashmolean Museum in 1908 after the arrival in 1894 of the antiquities from the Ashmolean Museum in Broad Street, for which see below. Further major additions to the collection were made throughout the 20th century (Whiteley 1997; White 1994).

Down until quite recent times St Giles Fair was enlivened by animal curiosities with or without their human counterparts. These might have their uses: it was to a Hyena in George Wombwell’s travelling menagerie at Oxford in December 1822 that Buckland took an ox shin, to carry out an archaeological experiment to replicate finds of ancient bones in the Kirkdale Cave (Rupke 1983, 33). On a more sophisticated level, the recently rediscovered view of an art exhibition in the old Town Hall in 1854 has confirmed this as the first occasion for the public display of some major pre-Raphaelite paintings (Harrison 2004). A seminal display of Oxford antiquities was made in 1912, the occasion of the supposed millennium of Oxford’s foundation, the show with its catalogue and series of public

The Schools, High Street [3] The true successor of the Schools Gallery is the large portrait collection that adorns the walls of the entire Examination Schools in the High Street, visible to those attending lectures or examinations, but otherwise unseen. 76

Julian Munby: A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present The collection was catalogued by Mrs A.L. Poole in 1912 and not since. [Poole 1912]

(if somewhat lacking both readers and books) was a suitable place that also provided a grand backdrop to impress important visitors. When the two Hadrianic candelabra from the imperial villa at Tivoli arrived (after due refreshment at in Piranesi’s workshop) as the gift of Sir Roger Newdigate the Radcliffe was the obvious place for them, and likewise the cast of the huge Laocoon group, and the cast collection given by Philip Duncan in 1825 that are all depicted on the Oxford Almanack for 1836 (Ovenell 1986, 189; Craster 1952, 128)

The Oxford Marbles Sheldonian Theatre court [4] The remaining classical inscriptions from the celebrated Arundel collection arrived in Oxford in 1667, and their first home was in the precinct of the Sheldonian Theatre, that is the stone walls surrounding theatre yard on east and west (only the west wall next Exeter College survives). Together with the Selden marbles bequeathed in 1645 they were placed in specially built niches and shelves being preserved not from weather but by a holly hedge from the over-curious public, they are thus depicted on Loggan’s 1675 view. (Sturdy 1999)

The Randolph Gallery [9] The amiable botanist Dr. Francis Randolph (1713-97), Principal of Alban Hall and younger brother of Thomas Randolph (V-C 1756-9), bequeathed £1000 for a new gallery to house the Pomfret marbles and other future gifts of ‘paintings, engravings and other curiosities’ (Whiteley 1997, 611). Shortly afterwards, Sir Roger Newdigate attempted to find a new home for the marbles in the empty ground floor of the Radcliffe Library in 1805, but this was frustrated by the Librarian and came to naught (Ovenell 1986, 184). Randolph’s benefaction was not realised until 1845 when the University Galleries opened in Beaumont Street (see above), and the marbles joined the Chantrey sculptures on the ground floor, and the Randolph Gallery remains today, though it has lost the charming exhedra opposite the front door (Ovenell 219; Whiteley 1997; Colvin 1983, 123).

The Marble School [5] In 1715 the inscriptions were removed indoors, to the upper gallery of the library, and then in 1749 taken downstairs to the ground floor and placed in the ‘Marble School’, the former School of Moral Philosophy on the north-west corner on the ground floor (Macray 1890, 190; Craster 1952, 5; Vickers 2006). They eventually found their way to the Ashmolean Museum in Beaumont Street, but in the 1880s they were housed in the basement of the Old Ashmolean in Broad Street (Parker 1888) A new museum? [6] With the acquisition of the remaining ‘Pomfret Marbles’ in 1755 a new home had to be found for the sculptures. That a specially built museum was planned for them is suggested by the Oxford Almanack of 1757, a splendid animated view of the new acquisition, with additional figures such as the University attended by her three faculties being brought out of Gothic retirement. In the background two figures consult a scroll with a plan of the domed temple behind them, described in the contemporary explanation as ‘Architecture... consulting with Geometry on the Plan of a Building, destined for the Reception of these once more united Collections’ (Petter 1974, 68). The lawyer William Blackstone, Fellow of All Souls, was involved in the reception of the marbles, and for a while entertained hopes of promoting a separate museum for these and other antiquities (Prest 2008, 131).

The Cast Gallery [10] In the 18th century the presence of antique sculpture and inscriptions gave a learned air to university institutions but there is no reason to suppose that much use was made of them in the course of instruction. The numerous publications on Greek and Roman ‘Antiquities’ produced in Oxford from the 17th century onwards were very much literary and historical in character. It would have to wait until the 19th century for the creation of a didactic cast collection alongside the original marbles, and the recognition of ‘classical archaeology’ as a subject for the study of such antiquities to be allowed as a discipline (Kurtz 2004). When classical archaeology reached the curriculum in the 1880s a cast gallery was formed. Originally displayed alongside ancient marbles in the Randolph Gallery and in the new museum extension in the 1890s (Ashmolean 1931) the casts were placed in a purpose-built gallery built in 1959 behind the museum in Pusey Lane (and now once more brought into the new Ashmolean museum which has crossed the lane to join them).

The Logic School [7] The new museum was opposed by the Whig interest, and the grand design was quietly shelved, so another home was found in the Schools, and being too heavy to risk the gallery floor the marbles were placed on the ground floor in the Logic School at the south-east corner of the Schools Quadrangle, where they were illustrated by Ackermann in 1814 (Craster 1952, 5). The appearance of this view has always been slightly puzzling, until it is realised that the decorative ceiling of the room (later the Curators’ Room, and now the Bodleian Shop) was destroyed in the renovations of the 1950s (Oxon Libraries, Thomas Photo D253207a).

The Coin Room The Schools Quadrangle [11] From the mid 18th century the room above the southeast stair at the Gallery level housed the Bodleian coin collection of Laud and many additions by subsequent bequests. Previously the coins were kept in cabinets on the east wall of the Gallery, commemorated by an inscription as noted above. Although not strictly a separate museum, it was treated as a secure collection with special regulations for access (Myres 1950; Arnold 2006).

The Radcliffe Library [8] Further arrivals of antique sculpture demanded more space, and the new Radcliffe Library, with a vast interior 77

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Heberden Coin Room [12] The collection of coins in the Ashmolean Museum were transferred to the Bodleian in 1861, but the removal of the whole collection to the new Ashmolean Museum was delayed until 1920, with the establishment of the Heberden Coin Room and the endowment of its own Keeper, that opened in 1922, and received subsequent additions from college and other collections (Macray 483-4; Craster 12, 315; Ashmolean 1931; Kraay and Sutherland 1978).

of the natural history specimen in 1862. As reconstituted under the (largely absentee) keepership of J.H. Parker from 1870 it became ‘the Historical Museum of the University’ promoting ‘the study of Archaeology (or in other words of History in detail)’ as Parker described it (Ovenell, 228). Although his latter years were not without staff disputes and controversy, Parker laid the foundations for the museum’s future. (MacGregor 1983; Ovenell 1986; MacGregor 1997) The Ashmolean Museum in Beaumont Street [16] Under the vigorous keepership of Arthur Evans (from 1884) the museum in Broad Street had continued to grow, partly by acquisition of other Oxford collections (e.g. in 1886 the Bodleian’s antiquities). With the Fortnum benefaction in 1891 a new museum was built behind the University Galleries in Beaumont Street, opened in 1894, though the final amalgamation was only effected by a statute of 1908, creating the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. The museum was variously extended (e.g. for Egyptology) in the 1930s and 1950s. (Ashmolean 1931; Ovenell 1986; MacGregor 1997; White 1994)

The Anatomy School The Schools Quadrangle [13] The Anatomy School was on the first floor south side (Lower Reading Room) of the Schools, and contained one of Oxford’s earliest museums of curiosities, under the care of the Janitor of the Bodleian, and known as the ‘Repository’. This was a common feature of European anatomy ‘theatres’ (MacGregor 2007, 160), and as might be expected it contained instructive materials and natural curiosities such as a human skin, a 10-foot serpent and Oxford’s first Dodo, but its most famous exhibit was the ‘Tartar lambskin’, a cotton robe belonging to the Tsar Boris Godunov, brought back by the Muscovy Company [see Appendix below]. This and other items were dispersed or lost when the room was shelved for books in 1789 and then annexed to the Bodleian in 1805 as the ‘Auctarium’ (Clark 72-74; Macray 272, 282, 431; Gunther 1925, 252-79; Philip 1983, 90 n.76; Pickering 2010).

The Clarendon Science Museum [17] Broad Street The geological specimens from the Ashmolean were removed to a new Geological Museum by William Buckland, Professor of Geology, who applied to use the first floor of the Clarendon Building after the Press had moved out in 1829. The teaching rooms were decked out with geological specimens, amplified by additional collections of Pegge and Simmons, which remained until they were moved to the new University Museum in 1858 (Vernon 1909, 34, 60; Gunther 1925, 333; Ovenell 1986, 200).

Dr Lee’s Anatomy School Christ Church [14] A rather more serious teaching collection was assembled by the Readers in the new Anatomy School at Christ Church, built in 1766 with the benefactions of Dr John Friend (1675-1728) and Dr Matthew Lee (1695-1755).* Under the Readership of Henry Acland in the 1840s, it expanded with his acquisition of upwards of 3,000 specimens that passed to the new University Museum on its opening, and remain there today. Their curation caused no little problem at Christ Church, causing offence in the use of the Canon’s Stables for malodorous purposes, while specimens from Scotland readily preserved in whisky were impounded as suspected contraband (Vernon 1909, 43; Davies and Hull 1976; Kent 2001).

The Hope Collection of Engraved Portraits [18] Bodleian/Ashmolean The Revd Frederick William Hope bequeathed a collection of engraved portraits and books to the University in 1861. With its own keeper, the collection was at first placed in the gallery of the Radcliffe Camera, but in 1888 was separately housed in the School of Natural Philosophy in the Schools Quadrangle, until removed to the Ashmolean in 1924 (Macray 1890, 375, Clarke 1906, 75; Craster 1952, 77, 114). The Indian Institute Museum [19] Broad Street The Indian Institute was founded in 1880 and built 18831896 ‘to form a centre of teaching, inquiry, and information on all subjects relating to India and its inhabitants’. It included a library of books and manuscripts, and a museum ‘of select specimens of Indian arts and industries designed as ‘concise synopsis of Indian life and customs’ for students (Crosby 1923, 230; Cameron 1935, 237). The museum was a casualty of the abandonment of the poorly endowed and supported Institute by the University; the stuffed animals were removed in 1926, and the museum (with the addition of the Ashmolean’s Chinese ceramics) reopened in 1949 as a Museum of Eastern Art, finally removed to Beaumont Street in 1962 shortly before the Institute’s demise. (Evison 2004).

The Ashmolean Museum The Old Ashmolean Museum in Broad Street [15] The Ashmolean originated in the gift of Elias Ashmole in 1677 of his collections and those of the Tradescant family to the University, to be housed in a new building. His own collections were destroyed by fire in 1679, but the museum was opened in 1683, and was constructed as an all-in-one science building, consisting of a basement laboratory, lecture room and museum of natural curiosities (also antiquities and ethnography). The museum collections expanded and stagnated according to the enthusiasm of successive keepers and eventually acquired more of an emphasis on antiquities, losing its books and coins to the Bodleian, and especially after the removal 78

Julian Munby: A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present The Music School The Bate Collection [20] The Music Faculty collection of musical instruments is shown in the Faculty building in St Aldate’s, and derives from the gift in 1963 by Philip Bate of his collection of orchestral woodwind instruments. This has since been amplified by numerous gifts and loans of bows, brass, percussion and keyboard instruments, including a Javanese Gamelan, which like other items in the collection, is regularly played. (Music Faculty website)

collection of scientific instruments. Under the Keepership of R.T. Gunther, the pre-eminent historian of Oxford science, the collection grew to be a Museum of the History of Science, which its remains today in the widest sense. Indeed its presence in what had once been a museum of natural history, and the acquisition of numerous collections led Gunther to call it a ‘Museum of Historic Museums’ (Gunther 1935, iii; Simcock 1985). A recent refurbishment of the museum led to a series of important discoveries of its own institutional archaeology, both below ground and beneath the floorboards (Bennett et al. 2000).

Oxford University Museum of Natural History [21] The Oxford Museum, Parks Road The formation of ‘The Oxford Museum’ is part of a greater story of the University’s coming of age in the mid-19th century. Celebrated from the beginning as a remarkable achievement, the product of the joint ideals of Ruskin and Acland was a temple to science and art, in which the building was as much part of its display as the contents, and integral with library and teaching laboratories in natural sciences. The foundation stone was laid in 1855 and the Museum fully opened in 1861, with displays of Zoology, Anatomy, Geology and Mineralogy. The University’s scientific collections were thus brought together, and the museum soon acquired further collections such as the Hope Entomological Collection. The enormously varied displays remain exceedingly popular today. (Vernon 1909; Fox 1997)

Oxford University Press Museum [25] Great Clarendon Street The University Press has a small museum of printing and book production in Oxford, including many original punches and specimens of Oxford typefaces, and renowned examples of Oxford printing and publishing. In 2012 the museum re-opened following a major refurbishment and is now regularly open to the public. The Botanical Museum [26] Botanic Garden A museum of botany was established in 1859 in the Sherard Room at the Botanic Garden by the Professor of Botany, Dr Charles Daubeny (1795-1867), consisting of cases with specimens ‘illustrative of the structure, functions, and uses of Vegetables’, modelled on the museum at Kew. This outlived Daubeny, in a somewhat neglected state, and was reported to exist still in 1911 (Gunther 1912, 151). Belonging in the library rather than a museum, the collecting of specimens in a hortus siccus preserved alongside the living plants has always been an essential element of the study of botany, and the historic Oxford University Herbaria now contain over a million specimens. The Herbaria include important collections from the 17th century including those of the Oxford botanists Jacob Bobart the Younger (1640-1719), Robert Morison (1620-1683), Johan Jacob Dillenius (1684-1747), William Sherard (1659-1728), and John Sibthorp (17581796), and numerous more recent additions. (Oxford University Herbaria website)

The Pitt Rivers Museum [22] Parks Road One of the Oxford’s most famous and best-loved museums, the private collection of General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (1827-1900), pioneering archaeologist and ethnographer, was given to the university in 1883 while its owner developed his own archaeological museum at Cranbourne Chase in Dorset. The display is typological and thematic and is renowned for the generous quantity of material that can be explored from all corners of the globe on all possible themes. The museum re-opened in 2009 after a certain amount of discreet re-ordering, while meeting the essential visitor requirement of looking as if nothing had changed. (Blackwood 1970; Gosden and Larson 2007)

Museums of Oxford

Banbury Road [23] The planned new Pitt Rivers Museum in Banbury Road alas never came into being, despite an heroic design for a huge glass dome (Colvin, Unbuilt Oxford, 187). The only outcome was a very much more modest building to house parts of the music and prehistoric collections, the ‘Balfour Building’ placed behind the large houses on the site, and opened in 1986 in a separate annexe of the main museum. This remained until the property was transferred to Kellogg College in 2007 and the buildings were turned to domestic use.

The Oxford Town Hall [27] The City’s regalia, plate and pictures adorn the town hall. Pictures necessarily include portraits of civic worthies, but also include the delightful collection of drawings by William Turner of Oxford bequeathed by Sir Michael Sadleir, and other bequests of older and modern masters. One such, the gift of the Duke of Marlborough, is the huge canvas of Pietro da Cortona (1596 - 1669), the Rape of the Sabines whose sale is periodically demanded by politically correct councillors with possibly greater enthusiasm than classical learning. Other treasures acquired by the City include the keys, charters and miscellaneous trophies bestowed upon mayors by delegations from the cities of Europe and the world.

Museum of the History of Science [24] Old Ashmolean, Broad Street The old Ashmolean reopened as a museum in 1925, following the donation by Dr Lewis Evans of a notable 79

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor The Plate Room [28] Established in the medieval vaulted cellar of the Falcon tavern, just north of the medieval Gildhall, the plate room was designed to display the city’s plate and regalia with related items. While the Plate Room remains for occasional access, a selection of plate is permanently displayed on the ground floor of the Town Hall.

shop, houses a fine display of church plate from the Diocese of Oxford, in specially built showcases, if almost overwhelmed by the surrounding colourful display of stock in the Cathedral shop. St Michael-at-the-Northgate Treasury [33] The pre-Conquest tower of St. Michael’s is one of a small group of towers in Oxford that the public may climb for a rooftop view of the city. The church has installed a treasury of parochial antiquities and curiosities, including church plate, a sheila-na-gig, and the door of the Bocardo prison cell in which the protestant bishops were held before being burnt.

Architectural Museum [29] This is truly a ‘lost’ museum, since its interesting (if perhaps not valuable) collection was actually thrown away, a curious scandal that has never been fully explored, and is not generally known. The 1923 Schedule of the Property of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of Oxford listed ‘A large number of architectural fragments dating from the 12th century’ in or near the Library in the Town Hall. The only happy aspect of the brief history of this collection is that it was photographed by Taunt and catalogued before its demise (OAHS library tss). Of its later history it will suffice to say that when the Museum of Oxford was created in the 1970s the collection no longer existed, and it is believed to have been dumped in the 1960s, possibly in the Westgate Centre. It is perhaps unfortunate that it was not offered for sale, since the collection contained important examples from Oseney Abbey and a window of one of Oxford’s Norman stone houses.

Father Walmsley’s Museum [34] These words appear on the entrance archway to the parish hall of the Greyfriars Church in the Iffley Road. The Jesuit church of St Edmund and St Frideswide (built 1910) was passed to the Capuchins in 1930 and the friary was completed in 1931. This was achieved partly through the benefaction of Father Walmsley whose collection of religious art and memorabilia was formerly shown in this hall as a memorial to him, and today remains elsewhere in the friary, but not on permanent display. St Aloysius Reliquary [34] The baptistery of St Aloysius’s RC church in the Woodstock Road was adapted in 1907 to hold a collection of relics and antiquities bequeathed by Hartwell de la Garde that had previously been shown in a private chapel at No. 60 High Street. In 1971, when under the care of the Jesuits, the antiquities were dispersed and the relics burnt. Since the church was taken over by the Oratorians a further collection of relics has been acquired from the Carmelite convent at Chichester (Bertram 2000).

Museum of Oxford [30] Opened in 1974, this was a branch of the Oxfordshire City and County Museum that had opened in Woodstock in 1966 with the intention of finding a permanent home in Oxford. The county museum service established by Jean Cook, with its collections, field officers and sites and monuments record, was in its day a model for county museum services throughout England, though it no longer exists in its primary form. Oxford’s museum was located in the basement of the former Central Library and Town Hall, and was devoted to the history and archaeology of the city, with displays of many archaeological finds, and items from Oxford buildings and institutions, presented in a narrative sequence. The Museum has recently closed and reopened in the Town Hall in 2012 as a two-room display while its future is decided.

Art Galleries Though in no sense permanent collections, the commercial printsellers, art dealers and galleries provided displays of original works of art that were at all times a significant part of the Oxford cultural life. Some of the more prominent ones are listed here.

Ecclesiastical Collections

Art Galleries and Print Dealers [35] Wyatt’s: Between 1811 and 1885 James Wyatt, picture framer and printseller ran a shop at 115 High Street. His art dealing included commissioning a famous Oxford view from J.M.W. Turner, and being amongst the first to sell Pre-Raphaelite paintings (Harrison 2000, 76).

Christ Church Cathedral, Musée Lapidaire [31] A photograph by Henry Taunt (1842-1922) of the medieval cross base in the North Transept of the Cathedral (now in the Museum of Oxford) shows that there was at that time an ordered collection of masonry fragments (Romanesque voussoirs, column bases, etc.) which no doubt had been laid aside in the course of the restoration in the 19th century and carefully displayed on shelves. This collection included the incised coffin cover that is also now in the Museum of Oxford, but the whereabouts of the remaining collection is uncertain (Taunt Photos 1901 - NMR, CC49/00238 and 1913 - OCC, HT11637).

Ryman’s: James Ryman was also a framer and printseller, moving from St Aldate’s to 24-5 High Street in 1823. There the business remained until it moved next door in 1909 to No. 23 when the new Brasenose building was built, and lasted until 1968 (then becoming the Oxford Gallery). Ryman commissioned Turner’s last view of Oxford in 1839 (Harrison 2000, 92).

Christ Church, Diocesan Plate Display [32] The Chapter House of Oxford Cathedral, a magnificent 13th-century interior space that doubles as the cathedral

Bonfiglioli: Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928-85) opened a gallery in Little Clarendon Street in 1958, later moving to No. 80

Julian Munby: A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present Oxford Architectural and Historical Society [38] The museum of the Oxford Society for the Promotion of Gothic Architecture, founded in 1839, consisted of a collection of plaster casts and models of buildings, which between 1845 and 1860 was housed in the Society’s premises in the Holywell Music Room, at that time not being used for performances (Mee 1911, 200). This was a wholly practical collection of materials for the study and emulation of medieval buildings which (together with the Society’s drawings and publications) represented a systematic attempt to gather authenticated examples of the mouldings and sculptural styles to document the past and inform new building. When the lease ran out in 1860 the collections were transferred to the Clarendon Building, under the auspices of the Ashmolean Museum (Ovenell 1986, 226). The collection of casts was transferred to the University in 1896, and was subsequently catalogued by E.H. New (OAHS records). Many of the pieces survive in the County Museum store, having been displaced by the Ashmolean in the 1960s.

13 Turl Street, where annual exhibitions of watercolours from 1961 were very popular. He then continued these at Sanders (see ODNB Bonfiglioli). Sanders of Oxford: has been located at No. 104 High Street since 1927 in succession to a long-established bookshop. Christopher Lennox-Boyd (1941-2012) bought Sanders from Bonfiglioli in 1963, and under his ownership it became one of Oxford’s leading printsellers. Bear Lane Gallery: A new gallery for contemporary art was set up in a small shop at No. 6 Bear Lane in 1958, and was run by Nick Waterlow until amalgamated with the Museum of Modern Art in 1973 (White 1994, 489). The Oxford Gallery: Following on from the Rymans tenancy at No. 23 High Street, the Oxford Gallery of Joan CrossleyHolland was an important venue for the display and sale of contemporary arts and crafts from 1968 to 2001. Modern Art Oxford [36] The Museum of Modern Art Oxford was founded in 1965 with the aim of promoting the modern visual arts through temporary exhibitions of contemporary art and a permanent collection. After an initial opening in King Edward Street, it moved to the former Halls Brewery, Pembroke Street later in 1966. Having successfully become a home for educational events and exhibitions of international status, and recognising that the acquisition of a permanent collection was no longer its aim, in 2002 MOMA Oxford was renamed Modern Art Oxford (MAO) (White 1994, 489).

The Big Game Museum [39] Charles Peel (1869-1931), a natural history photographer and journalist, ran a Big Game Museum at No. 12 Woodstock Road between 1906 and about 1920 according to local directories. It was an exhibition of trophies from his hunting exploits, and (in addition to providing popular entertainment) it was intended to have practical value for training young men saddled with the expectation that they would go out and rule an empire in which shooting all varieties of native species was a necessary occupation (while also training them for the battlefield). Happily a catalogue of the exhibits survives, which included an astonishing variety of big game trophies and other stuffed animals, hunting rifles, and safari memorabilia from Peel’s time in Kenya. Peel moved to Devon in 1911 and gave his collection to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter (where Gerald the Giraffe remains to this day). The building still survives, now used by the Modern Languages Faculty (Peel 1906; Lisle 2011).

Private Museums The private museum is perhaps the hardest area to document, and it is certain that there will be more discoveries to be made. Collections of antiquities, books, maps and pictures doubtless exist today as they always have done, while the restoration and refacing of Oxford buildings has released a steady stream of architectural antiquities into North Oxford gardens and private collections.1

The Dragon School Museum [40] The Dragon School museum was first documented in 1903, as the ‘Church Memorial’, a Library and Museum built in memory of Maurice Church OD, who was killed in 1901 at Haartebeestfontein in the Transvaal. The building, which survives today, was designed by E.M.P. Fisher OD, and early additions to the collection included an ancient metal dragon (Japan), native spears (Upper Burmah), and a sugar cane (Dragonian, August 1903).

Alderman Fletcher [37] One of the houses in Broad Street lost to the New Bodleian had belonged to Alderman Fletcher and still at the time of demolition in 1937 retained some of his collection of antiquities (Pantin 1937, 185-5). William Fletcher (17391826) was a partner in the Old Bank in High Street, and lived at 46 Broad Street (which contained wall paintings – once to be seen in the Museum of Oxford), and amassed a collection of stained glass which is today divided between the Bodleian Library and Yarnton parish church. Fletcher was buried at Yarnton, in a medieval type tomb with a commemorative brass, and his portrait is in the Town Hall.

The Telecommunications Museum [41] The new Oxford telephone exchange in Speedwell Street was opened in 1959 by Ernest Marples, and from 1963 a telecommunications museum was established in the basement by Reg Earl. It was later re-housed in a newly made room and opened by the wife of the Chairman of the Post Office in July 1970. The museum included many examples of early machines, and relics of Oxford’s telephone history, and a library of related material (Earl 1974; 1978).

A celebrated example was Dr W.A. Pantin’s wooden seat from the medieval garderobe at Ashbury Manor, which was, as Walter Mitchell reported, mistakenly chopped for firewood by his scout. 1

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor The Dolls House Museum [42] The Dolls House collection of Mrs Graham Greene was housed in the specially built Rotunda in Iffley Turn, Oxford, opened in 1962. This was an informed collection by a scholar of repute rather than being a show for children (indeed it was notable for refusing entry to children under the age of 16). The collection was sold by Vivien Greene in her lifetime (Bonhams, Knightsbridge on 9 December 1998 and 6 May 1999), so that other collectors could enjoy possessing items and learn directly from her of their interest (Greene 1995).

Oxford Castle Unlocked [47] The final closure of the Oxford prison in 1996 released the medieval and later buildings of Oxford Castle for public enjoyment, when the Home Office returned the site to the County Council. While the prison was divided up for an hotel and other commercial properties, the Oxford Preservation Trust obtained a lease of the castle mound, St. George’s Tower, and the adjacent D Wing of the former prison. With the involvement of Continuum (responsible for the Oxford Story), the Trust has established the ‘Oxford Castle Unlocked’ heritage attraction that displays the medieval castle and life in the later prison buildings; it was opened by the Queen in May 2006.

The Desmond Morris Collection [43] The Zoologist, author and artist Desmond Morris formed a significant collection of Cypriot Antiquities housed in his Oxford home. These were sold in auction at Christie’s, London (6th November 2001). Other anthropological and zoological curiosities remain.

New and Virtual Museums The New Ashmolean Museum [48] The demolition of the later 19th and 20th-century additions to the Ashmolean Museum, an extensive rebuilding that crossed the back lane to incorporate the Cast Gallery, a wholesale themed redisplay of the collections, and the opening of the cellar and rooftop for restaurants is sufficient to qualify in this list as a new museum. Reopened in November 2009, it has proved enormously popular as an exciting and informative museum, while allowing hardened antiquaries wry amusement in detecting the absence of their favourite objects.

Morris Motors [44] The early history of Oxford’s motor industry has vanished almost without trace, save for a blue plaque on William Morris’s house where he first made bicycles, and a small window display in his first car manufactory in Longwall Street. The Morris archives no longer exist, but Lord Nuffield’s House ‘Nuffield Place’, at Huntercombe, Nettlebed, bequeathed to Nuffield College and open to the public, has now passed to the National Trust, who re-opened it in August 2012. His study from the first Cowley Factory has been preserved in the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon in Warwickshire along with other Morris memorabilia. Near Oxford at Hanborough there is also a Morris Motors Museum included in the Oxford Bus Museum (see following entry).

Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum [49] The Territorial Army Barracks in Slade Park, Headington housed a regimental museum of uniforms, weapons and artefacts of the Light Infantry regiment formed in 1741 and survived until 1966 when the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry amalgamated with the Royal Green Jackets. The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Trust was established in 2000 to set up a new museum that is currently being built in the grounds of the County Museum at Woodstock.

The Oxford Bus Museum [45] Just beyond the reaches of the City is the Bus Museum, started in 1967 by the Oxford Bus Preservation Syndicate, who acquired premises in the old station yard at Long Hanborough in 1984 to house the growing collection of old Oxford buses. Since 2004 this has also included the Morris Motors Museum telling the story of car production at Cowley with a collection of vintage vehicles. (Museum website)

Story Museum [50] Supported by writers in Oxford and elsewhere, the vision of the Story Museum is to be a world centre for story and story telling. Thanks to a generous donation in 2009 the Museum has obtained a lease of Rochester House in Pembroke Street (the former home of Oxford’s telephone exchange), where it first opened in Spring of 2012 and plans to develop its activities, with a new building planned in 2013.

The Oxford Story [46] Between 1986 and 2007 the Oxford Story was housed in a 19th-century warehouse between Broad Street and Ship Street. Following on from the spectacular success of the Yorvik museum in York, in which visitors experienced the sights, noise (and smells) of Viking York from the safety of a travelling capsule, a number of similar heritage experiences were opened in the provinces.

Science Oxford [51] The educational and public face of this wide-ranging charity has run explorative science displays in Oxford at ‘Curioxity’ in George Street and now has a hands-on science gallery at ‘Science Oxford Live’ in St Clements. They are currently seeking to develop the site of Macclesfield House by the castle mound in New Road as a centre for the display of science and learning, with a major new building.

The Oxford Story consisted of a ride (the visitors seated on a moving desk) through the medieval University (an academic hall and street) and up through the renaissance, Civil War and into modern Oxford. The intention (not shared by any other museum in Oxford) was to give the visitor a background understanding of what the University and colleges had done and why it was so important.

Virtual Museums Many of the above institutions have websites, but while often informative these rarely use their full potential to 82

Julian Munby: A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present Appendix: The Tartar Lamb Cloak in the Bodleian

provide information about their collections. Uniquely, the Museum of the History of Science has been creating virtual versions of its exhibitions since 1995. With the current fashion for reducing the number of objects on display and the quantity of useful information on any labelling, the role of the virtual catalogue may take on an important role in promoting that most important aspect of museums: access to real information that can satisfy the curiosity aroused by seeing objects rather than merely providing entertainment.

Among Oxford’s lost treasures, none is so evocative and extraordinary as the ‘Tartar Lamb Cloak’. This was a present from Boris Godunov brought back by the English Ambassador Sir Richard Lee in 1601, and presumably made of cotton or silk, though believed to the wool of the mythical ‘tartar lamb’ (Appleby 1997, 23). It was perhaps intended to be a present for Queen Elizabeth, but was never delivered (Lee had an argument about payment of his expenses) and instead he offered it to his friend Sir Thomas Bodley and then left it to the Library in his will (Willan 1956, 233-6; Macray 1890, 431). The ‘Tartar Lamb’ was a library treasure, kept in a special box in the Anatomy School, and shown to important visitors. At some point in the mid-17th century it seems to have become ‘Joseph’s Coat’. In 1654 Evelyn was shown (in the Bodleian Tower closet) ‘Joseph’s part-coloured coate’, while Maconys, a visiting Frenchman in 1663, was shown ‘a skin robe of many colours, so they have to say it was Joseph’s’ (MacGregor 1983, 88,). An alternative provenance for the deutero-coat is provided by the Catalogue of Benefactor’s to the Anatomy collection, which reports ‘An Indian King’s Coat, commonly called Joseph’s Coat, Presented by Mr Betts, a Londoner’ (Gunther 1925, 254, 259, 277). Attacked perhaps by moth and even the ridicule of learned visitors, the one or more coats were then, like the stuffed Dodo, thrown away, their significance quite forgotten (Macray 1890, 51, 74, 129, 131). At a later date the Ashmolean collection actually included an example of the fern called the ‘Lamb of Tartary’, one of the candidates for this strange notion (Gunther 1912, 151).

Conclusion The astonishing variety of Oxford’s Museums past and present may come as something of a surprise, but the total number is also remarkable, perhaps less so in a University town that has such a history, and now boasts two universities, numerous colleges and institutions, and not the least more than a hundred libraries with some ten million books. The more significant figure is, however, the number of museums still extant, only about a quarter of those that have been. This reflects the bi-polar tendency to collect and then to throw away, the latter (as evidenced by libraries) often a stronger motive in forward-looking institutions with limited sympathies for the past or much understanding of some aspects of discovery and learning. As for collecting, one final moral tale: at some time in the 1870s one of Gilbert Scott’s assistants on the Cathedral restoration entered the space above the choir vault and found it was stuffed full of hay. Realising that this could be none other than a remnant of the siege store of Charles I’s garrison in the 1640s, samples were shown to the Botany professor (who identified meadow hay), and two bags were retained in the college archives and the University Museum respectively (Ashdown 1988). Today, when the enormous botanic importance of Port Meadow’s historic grassland habitat is a matter of some interest, these precious samples that were carefully laid aside precisely for this moment, are alas no longer to be found. Res ipsa loquitur.

Bibliography Appleby, J.H. 1997. The Royal Society and the Tartar Lamb, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 51 (1), 23-34. Arnold, K. 2006. Cabinets for the Curious. Looking Back at Early English Museums. Farnham, Ashgate (cap. 4 ‘Learned Treasures’ on coin collections). Ashdown, J et al. 1988 The Roof Carpentry of Oxford Cathedral, Oxoniensia 53, 195-204. Ashmolean 1931. Ashmolean Museum Summary Guide Department of Antiquities. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Bennett, J.A. et al. 2000. Solomon’s House in Oxford. New Finds from the First Museum. Oxford, Museum of the History of Science. Bertram, J. 2000. St. Aloysius Parish, Oxford. The Third English Oratory. Oxford, Oratory House. Blackwood, B. 1970. The Origin and Development of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Oxford [offprinted from Occasional Papers in technology XI (1970) in 1974 and 1991. Bodleian, 1982. Bodleian Library exhibition catalogue, Town and Gown. Eight hundred years of Oxford life. Oxford, Bodleian Library.

So museums and collections come and go, as they always have done. New objects are acquired and old ones are sometimes disposed of; displays are modernised in keeping with the latest fashion. The public, possibly more conservative than those in the forefront of the new museology, continues to enjoy looking in wonderment at strange and familiar things, and is curious to be informed or at least intrigued (this accounts for the enduring popularity of the apparently unchanging Pitt Rivers Museum). But we live in dangerous times, when the survival of museums and libraries cannot be taken for granted and those who care about these vital means of instruction must fight to preserve them. Perhaps the only conclusion is that museums, just as much as well-loved bookshops and restaurants that have become part of the scene, may not last, and should be patronised and enjoyed while they do.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Gunther, R.T. 1935. Handbook of the Museum of the History of Science in the Old Ashmolean Building Oxford. Oxford, University Press. Harrison, C. 2000 . Turner’s Oxford. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Harrison, C. 2004. An Exhibition at the Oxford Town Hall in 1854, The Ashmolean 47, (Summer 2004), 12-13. Kent, P.W. 2001. Some Scientists in the life of Christ Church, Oxford. Oxford. Kraay, C.M. and Sutherland, C.H.V. 1978. The Heberden Coin Room Origins and Development. [on Ashmolean website, revised 1989, 2001] Kurtz, D. (ed.) 2004. Reception of Classical Art, An Introduction (Beazley Archive - Studies in Classical Archaeology 3), Oxford, British Archaeological Reports S1295. Lisle, Nicola 2011. Playing to Town and Gown, Oxfordshire Limited Edition [supplement to Oxford Times], January, 93-5. MacGregor, A.G. (ed.) 1983. Tradescant’s Rarities. Essays on the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum 1685. Oxford, Clarendon Press. MacGregor A.G. 1997; The Ashmolean Museum, in Brock and Curthoys 1997, 598-610. MacGregor, A.G. 2007. Curiosity and Enlightenment. Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. New Haven and London, Yale University Press. Macray, W.D. 1890. Annals of the Bodleian Library. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Mee, J.H. 1911. The Oldest Music Room in Europe. London, John Lane. Midgley, G. 1996. University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford. New Haven and London, Yale University Press. Munby, J. 1992. Zacharias’s: a 14th-century Oxford New Inn and the origins of the medieval urban inn, Oxoniensia 57, 245-309. Munby, J. 2007. Two Oxford Engravings: Archaeology and the University in the 18th century, in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Papers in honour of Martin Henig, presented on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Oxford, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1619 (2007), 345-51. Myres, J.N.L. 1950. The Bodleian Coin Cabinets, Bodleian Library Record III.29 (Jan. 1950), 45-49. Ovenell, R.F. 1986. The Ashmolean Museum 1683-1894. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Oxford 1912. Oxford City Millenary Exhibition 1912 Catalogue of a Loan Collection of Antiquities, Pictures, Books, Manuscripts etc. illustrating the History and Topography of The City of Oxford. Oxford; and Oxford Millenary 912-1912. Lectures on the City’s History reprinted from the Oxford Chronicle. Oxford, J. Vincent. Pantin, W.A. 1937. Some recently demolished houses in Broad Street, Oxoniensia 2, 171-200. Parker & Co. 1888. The Visitor’s Guide to Oxford. Oxford. Peel, C.V.A 1906. Popular Guide to Mr. C.V.A. Peel’s Exhibition of Big-Game Trophies and Museum of

Brock M.G. and Curthoys, M.C. (eds.) 1997. The History of the University of Oxford vi Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 1. Oxford, University Press. Cameron, A.C. 1935. Oxford 1935 A Souvenir of the World Educational Conferences. Oxford, University Press. Clark, A. 1906. A Bodleian Guide for Visitors. Oxford Clifford, H.M. 2004. A Treasured Inheritance. 600 Years of Oxford College Silver. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Colvin, H.M. 1983. Unbuilt Oxford. New Haven and London, Yale University Press. Craster, E. 1952. History of the Bodleian Library, 18451945. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Crosby, L.A. and Aydelotte, F. 1923. Oxford of Today A Manual for Prospective Rhodes Scholars. New York, Oxford University Press. Davies K.C. and Hull J. 1976. The Zoological Collections of the Oxford University Museum. Oxford, University Museum. De Beer, G.R. 1953. Sir Hans Sloane and the British Museum. London, Oxford University Press. Earl, R.A.J. 1974. Telecommunications in Oxford. A brief History. Oxford, Post Office Telecommunications Museum. Earl, R.A.J. 1978. The Development of the Telephone in Oxford, 1877-1977. Oxford, Post Office Telecommunications Museum (repr. 1983). Evison, G. 2004. The Orientalist, his Institute and the Empire: the rise and subsequent decline of the Oxford University Indian Institute. (text of talk on ‘Broad Street’ website, accessed January 2013: http://www.headington. org.uk/oxon/broad/buildings/east/old_indian_institute/ index.htm Fox, R. 1997. The University Museum and Oxford Science, 1850-1880, in Brock and Curthoys 1997, 641-910. Goldsmiths’ Company 1953. Treasures of Oxford. Catalogue of the Exhibits; and Treasures of Oxford. Illustrations. London, Goldsmiths’ Hall. Gosden, C. and Larson, F. 2007. Knowing Things: Exploring the Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum 1884-1945. Oxford. Greene, V. c.1976. The Rotunda: A Museum of Period Dolls’ Houses. Oxford, Graham Greene Productions. Greene, V. 1979, English Dolls Houses of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. London, Bell and Hyman. Greene, V. 1995. The Vivien Greene Dolls’ House Collection: The Complete Rotunda Collection. London, Cassell. Grego, J. 1880. Rowlandson the caricaturist, 2 vols. London, Chatto and Windus. Gunther, R.T. 1912. Oxford Gardens. Oxford, Parker and Son. Gunther, R.T. 1923a. Early Science in Oxford I: Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Surveying. (Oxford Hist. Soc. lxxviii) Gunther, R.T. 1923b. Early Science in Oxford II: Astronomy. (Oxford Hist. Soc. lxxviii) Gunther, R.T. 1925. Early Science in Oxford III: Biological Sciences and Collections. Oxford (printed for subscribers).

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Julian Munby: A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present Natural History and Anthropology. Guildford, Billing and Sons. Petter, H.M. 1974. The Oxford Almanacks. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Philip, I.G. 1983. The Bodleian Library in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Pickering, J. 2010. The Oxford Dodo. The sad story of the ungainly bird that became an Oxford icon. Oxford, University Museum of Natural History. Piggott, S. 1986. Antiquarian Studies, in L.S. Sutherland and L.G. Mitchell (eds.) The History of the University V, The Eighteenth Century. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Poole, Mrs. R.L. 1912, 1926. Catalogue of Oxford Portraits I-III, Oxford Hist. Soc. lvii, 1912; lxxxi & lxxxii, 1926. Prest, W. (2008). William Blackstone. Law and Letters in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford, University Press. Rupke, N.A. 1983. The Great Chain of History. William Buckland and the English School of Geology 18141849. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Simcock, A.V. (ed.) 1985. Robert T. Gunther and the Old Ashmolean. Oxford, Museum of the History of Science. Sturdy, D. 1999. Christopher Wren and Oxford’s Garden of Antiquities, Minerva 10, 1999, 25-28. Vaisey, D. 1998. A Cabinet of Curiosities. Unusual items in the Bodleian Library. Oxford, Bodleian Library. Vernon, H.M. and K.D. 1909. A History of the Oxford Museum. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Vickers, M. 2006. The Arundel and Pomfret Marbles. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Watts, W.W. 1928. Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Silver Plate belonging to the Colleges of the University of Oxford. Oxford, Clarendon Press. White, C. 1994 Museums and Art Galleries, in Harrison, B. (ed.) 1994. The History of the University of Oxford viii The Twentieth Century. Oxford, 484-98. Whiteley, J.J. 1997. The University Galleries, in Brock and Curthoys 1997, 611-30. Willan, T.S. 1956. The Early History of the Russia Company. Manchester, Manchester University Press.

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The Bodleian Picture Gallery Jon Whiteley Abstract The Bodleian Picture Gallery has not been adequately acknowledged in accounts of the development of public museums in Britain. As the first public art gallery in the country and a forerunner of the National Portrait Gallery, it played an important role in the intellectual life of the University for over two hundred years. Evolving haphazardly from a collection of curiosities and portraits in the 1620s and 30s, it become a fully fledged gallery of art in the 1660s and remained for many years an essential port of call for visitors to Oxford. It evolved, at first, like a number of similar museums, as an adjunct to the purposes of the library but in the 20th century, its role was increasingly seen as out of keeping with the needs of the books, particularly as the University Galleries, that opened in 1846, became the main repository for works of art within the University. Keywords Bodleian, University Galleries, Ashmolean Museum, Portraits, Arundel marbles, Thomas Bodley Thomas Hearne, Jacobitism, John Aubrey, John Evelyn, Anthony à Wood, John King, Sir Henry Savile, Sir Henry Lee.

Since William Dunn Macray first wrote about the Bodleian Picture Gallery in his Annals of the Bodleian Library in 1868, several historians of the Bodleian have dealt with the story of the Gallery, mostly in the context of the history of the library. If there is an argument for revisiting the Picture Gallery, it is because the role of the Gallery in the genealogy of Oxford museums and its significance as the first public art gallery in Britain has not been as widely acknowledged as it might have been in more general discussions of the subject. This is partly because the role of the Gallery in the creation of the Oxford museums has been eclipsed by the Ashmolean, particularly after the Ashmolean had been amalgamated with the University Galleries in 1908. The Ashmolean is old but the Picture Gallery was older. How much older is difficult to say because the Picture Gallery, where the University art collection was housed, was never formally set up but evolved within a large gallery, corresponding to the present Upper Reading Room, built over three sides of the new Schools Quadrangle, which the founder, Sir Thomas Bodley, had intended for the future ‘Stowage of Books’ (Macray 1890, 406-407).

Room was known (Macray 1890, 431-4). A gold medal of Frederic Count Palatine, presented in 1621 by the town clerk, Ralph Radcliff, and a brass bulla of Boris Godunov given in the same year by Christopher Rutinger, were also deposited in this room (Craster 1925, 23). Lee had received his cloak from the tsar in exchange for an agate mortar and pestel which he had given to Rutinger, who was then the tsar’s physician (Appleby 23-4), and it was this, perhaps, which motivated Rutlinger to give his bulla to the library. These accessions and several others were noted by Jean Fontaine and Louis Schönbub on a visit to the the Bodleian in 1631: ‘In Scholis publicis est, 1. bibliotheca, instructior reliquis omnibus; 2. superior ambulatio totius domus rotunda; studendi gratia facta est, ubi depicta Philosophi, Jurisconsulti, Theologii etc, in parvulo cubiculo hujus ambulationis custodientur; 3. metalla, calendarium aureum, sigillum aureum ducis Moscovitarum, gladius Indicus, toga pellibus agninis, quae crescent in terra Tartariae, facta, magnitudinis pellis cuninculi; pictura Henrici Savili, equities aurati’ (Macray 1890, 74). The list is brief and may have included most of what there was to see at the time. The only portraits noted by them in the ambulatory were in the frieze but they mentioned Sir Henry Savile’s portrait, presented in 1622, which was then also in the closet. Georg Christoph Stirn, on a visit to the library in 1638, described a number of recent additions, including two ‘idols’- an Egyptian shwabti and a figure from the West Indies, presented two years earlier by Archbishop Laud - and a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in featherwork. They also saw a garment described as Joseph’s Coat of Many Colours (MacGregor 1983, 88), a leather coat, trimmed with multi-coloured fur (Quarrell and Quarrell 1926, 23) which has often been identified with the Tartar cloak; but in an early list of benefactors of the Anatomy Theatre, where Joseph’s coat was subsequently kept, it is described as ‘An Indian King’s Coat, commonly called Joseph’s Coat. Presented by Mr. Betts, a Londoner’ (Gunter 1925, 277). It may be significant that Christopher Wren had not seen the Tartar cloak when Sir Theodore de

When the South and East ranges of the Quadrangle were completed in 1619 and the North range was completed in 1640 the library had no immediate need for its new large, U-shaped book store on the second floor and it gradually came into use as a space where the University’s portraits and a few curiosities were put on show. The development of this floor as a Picture Gallery belongs mainly to the years after the Restoration but there are several earlier references to the existence of a small collection of art and artefacts in one of the rooms opening onto the Gallery. This room, in the angle of the East and North wings, had been fitted up in 1622 with a turkey carpet and with chairs, upholstered in Russia leather, as a meeting room for the Curators (Craster 1956. 132-3). By 1624, Sir Richard Lee’s Tartar cloak, made from a species of sheep, half plant, half animal, was to be seen in ‘Sir Thomas Bodley’s studdie or closet’ as the Curators’

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Vaux described it at a meeting of the Royal Society in 1666 (Appleby 1997, 23) although Joseph’s Coat was well known and must have been familiar to Wren. Monconys described it sceptically in 1663: ‘on nous montra une robe de peau de diverses couleurs, que les oblige a dire que c’est celle de Joseph’. (Monconys 1666, 52-3) In 1654, John Evelyn noted it without comment, along with other curiosites: ‘In the Closset of the Tower, they shew Josephs parti colourd Coate, A Muscovian Ladys Whip, some Indian Weapons, Urnes, Lamps: etc: but the rarest, is the Whole Alcoran written in one large sheete of Calico, which is made up in a Priests Vesture or Cape after the Turkish, & the Arabic Character so exquisitely written, as no printed letter comes neere it: Also a rolle of Magical Charmes or Periapta, divers Talismans, some Medails’(Beer 1959, 340). The ‘Closset of the Tower’ is probably the Tower Room, located in the centre of the East range, and it may be that the collection had been moved here by this date.

Gallery and when Uffenbach was taken round in 1710, it was the Sub-Librarian, Joseph Crabb, who showed him the exhibits. According to Uffenbach, Crabb charged visitors five shillings for showing the curiosities. Parties were admitted on the same terms but this did not include access to books which involved a formal oath-taking ceremony and a further charge. During his visit to Oxford, Uffenbach paid Crabb five shillings for a tour of the library, a further charge to join Crabb’s tour of the coins and curiosities, eight shillings for admission as a reader and a guinea, paid as a bribe to Crabb, to allow him unrestricted access to the codices. He must, also, have paid an honorarium to the janitor, Thomas Hearne, when he visited the Anatomy Theatre. The general public, however, seems to have been admitted on more generous terms. This, at least, is implied by Uffenbach’s astonished comment on seeing many casual visitors during his first tour: ‘Every moment brings fresh spectators of this description and, surprisingly enough, amongst them peasants and womenfolk, who gaze at the library as a cow might gaze at a new gate with such a noise and trampling of feet that others are much disturbed’ (Quarrell and Quarrell 1926, 12-8).

By the date of Evelyn’s visit, the coins and medals had become the most important part of the Gallery collection. The earliest gifts of coins were made by Thomas Gataker and Edmund Leigh in 1620 and further accessions continued to arrive with regularity but the fame of the collection rested chiefly on Laud’s gift of 1636 and Ralph Freke’s of 1657 (Myres 1951a, 45). Freke’s collection, housed in an ornate cabinet, was placed at first in the South-East corner of the gallery but by Wood’s time, both collections had been moved into the Tower Room where elaborate inscriptions, recording the two gifts, survive on the East wall. Samuel Sorbière noted these collections when he visited the Bodleian about six years after Evelyn: ‘Nous nous promenasmes dans les Galeries au dessus de la Bibliothèque, et vismes les médailles, qui y fait en grande nombre : et à l’entour des galeries il y a quelques portraits des gens doctes. On nous y monstra l’epée que le Pape envoya à Henry VIII. Comme Defenseur de la Foy’ (Sorbières 1666, 86-87). Uffenbach records seeing this sword when he visited the Gallery in 1710. It was then kept in a drawer in the upper part of the Laud coin cabinet from which it was removed ‘with much circumstance and as if it were a sacred thing’ (Quarrell and Quarrell 1926, 13).

The Gallery retained a modicum of rarities but it was rapidly overtaken as a museum of curiosities by the development of the Anatomy Theatre in the floor below. Fontaine and Schönbub noted a small collection here in 1631: ‘Schola medica eadem in domo ubi 1. Serpens indicus 10 pedes longus; 2 pellis hominis totius; 3 collium album ex Mare Rubro’ (Macray 1890,74-5). By the time Evelyn visited it in 1654 it had become more substantial but Evelyn, who had seen the famous anatomical museum in Leiden in 1641 (Beer 1959, 31), was not impressed: ‘The Physick Or Anatomie Schole, adorn’d with some rarities of natural things; but nothing extraordinary, save the Skin of a Jaccal, a rarely Colour’d Jacaroo, or prodigious large Parot, two humming birds, not much bigger than our humble bee: which indeed I had not seene before that I remember’ (Beer 1959, 340). Monconys, who visited the Anatomy Museum in 1663, was also unenthusiastic: ‘il y a une Sale où l’on fait les dissections, dans laquelle il y a plusieurs animaux, poisons, oyseaux et autres chose assez curieuses; mais il n’avoit rien que je neusse veu en mille lieux’. (Monconys 1666, 52) Sorbière was even more dismissive: ‘un petit theatre Anatomique qui ne merite pas d’ être veu’ (Sorbière 1666, 87).

The collections of coins, curiosities and paintings were administered directly by the library staff which consisted for many years of a librarian, sub-librarian and janitor. Bodley had envisaged that the janitor would be a simple cleaner, ‘some honest poore scholar, or servant of the Keeper’ who would be paid £4 a year ‘to wipe, sweepe, and keepe cleane all the Librarie books, tables, shelves, seates, closets, windows, and whatsoever els is subject to the anoiance of dust’ (Wheeler 1920, 312) but the library Delegates, more aware than Bodley that librarians might make reluctant door-keepers, doubled the salary and stipulated that the janitor should remain in the library during opening hours and ring the bell for opening and closing. The janitor was also expected to show the contents of the Anatomy Theatre to visitors and, in general, undertook the more menial tasks of an assistant-librarian. There is no evidence that the janitors had similar responsibilities in the Picture

By the end of the century, the Anatomy Theatre, had become a well-stocked museum, dedicated to the study of natural history, particularly in its more exotic and eccentric aspects (Hunter 1985, 161). For a small fee, paid to the janitor, visitors could see not only several hundred objects of natural history, such as a walrus skull, two crocodiles, a small whale found in the river Severn (which had been given to the library in 1678 by an apothecary from Gloucester), paintings of human muscles by Isaac Fuller, a moss-encrusted human skull, a pygmy’s skeleton and several ‘natural Bodies and preservations in Spirits’(Huddesford 1772, 14) but also a handful of curiosities which had little relevance to the study of natural 88

Jon Whiteley: Picture Gallery in the Bodleian history: loaves of bread, made during the siege of Oxford, articles of Indian costume, a pair of boots belonging the king of Poland, a pair of shoes belonging to Queen Elizabeth, an assassin’s baton, filled with quick-silver, and many other objects with colourful associations, including Joseph’s Coat, which had been moved down from the Gallery. As Uffenbach observed, these would have been more appropriate in the Ashmolean than they were in an Anatomy Theatre (Quarrell and Quarrell 1926, 24) and after 1683, gifts of this kind which would, at one time have gone to the Bodleian, tended to go to the new museum. A rationalization of the collections had been anticipated by Ashmole but, as Martin Welch (Welch 1983, 50- 1) and Michael Hunter (Hunter 1985, 161) have pointed out, this did not happen immediately. Comparison between the list of contents of the anatomical museum in c. 1675 (Gunter’s list A) and a list of accessions up to 1713 (Gunter’s list C) suggests that the older museum was a flourishing and expanding institution during the earlier years of the Ashmolean’s existence when Hearne, who was devoted to the Anatomical Museum, was the janitor in charge. It is not certain when the two museums were amalgamated but, by 1772, according to a note in William Huddesford’s biography of Hearne, the Anatomy Museum had been closed for some time and its contents had been moved to the Ashmolean (Huddesford 1772, 14).

earliest paintings acquired for the Gallery were portraits of the founders of the library, the first of which, a portrait of Sir Henry Savile, Bodley’s executor and a generous benefactor, was presented by the sitter’s widow in 1622. Bodley’s portrait was bought by the curators in 1634/5 (Garlick 2004, 273) and a second portrait of Bodley was commissioned from a ‘Frenche painter’ in 1636/7 (Garlick 2004, 33-4) . By the 1640s, portraits of contemporaries of a more general interest began to be added. In 1644, the Curators paid two pounds for a portrait of James Ussher, bishop of Carlisle, who was living in Oxford at the time. This was placed ‘in the closet’ (Garlick 2004, 307) alongside the portraits of Savile. In 1648, the library received the portrait of James Bainbridge, first Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, who had died in 1643, leaving his portrait to the library ‘with convenient curtaines of silke’, the first of a series of portraits of astronomers given at intervals to the Gallery (Macray 1890, 106). In 1662, the library paid for the carriage of a portrait of James Ogilby, the author and printer, who subsequently became King’s Cosmographer and Surveyor to the City of London (Garlick 2004, 241). Inclusion in the Portrait Gallery became an award of merit. Anthony à Wood, who had circulated a rumour that a fellow scholar was the son of a tailor, defended himself from an accusation of malice by pointing out that, ‘knowing his education was mechanical’ his colleagues ‘esteem him a Prodigie and therefore are much desirous that his picture may hang in the public gallery at the Schools’ (Dick 1999, ci). The reply was disingenuous but acknowledged the role of the portrait gallery as a place where distinguished contemporaries were honoured by the University.

The process of transfers and rationalisation continued through the eighteenth century, notably with the removal of the Arundel inscriptions from the Picture Gallery to the School of Moral Philosophy in the 1749 and the installation of the coin collection in a room of its own in 1761. The Pomfret marbles, given in 1755, which would have been too heavy for the floor of the Gallery, were placed directly into the School of Logic on the ground floor where they remained until 1845. Several notable artefacts remained in the Picture Gallery. Guy Fawkes’s lantern, one of the most popular exhibits, was not passed to the Ashmolean until 1887 while the chair made from the timbers of Drake’s ship, The Golden Hind, is still in the Bodleian. Mathematical and astronomical instruments were retained in the library although one or two were placed in cases in the Picture Gallery in the nineteenth century. These included several of the earliest gifts to the Bodleian, the first of which, an astronomical sphere and other instruments, was presented by Josias Bodley, brother of the founder, in 1601 (Macray 1890, 25). When Uffenbach saw these in 1710, they were grouped on a table round an elaborate alabaster ‘mathematical pillar’ given by Sir Clement Edmunds in 1620 (Quarrell and Quarrell 1926, 11).

The gift of a portrait of Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College, presented by the college to the Picture Gallery in 1665, marks the beginning of an interest in figures from the past (Garlick 2004, 253). This may have been connected in some way with the commission given to Willem Sonmans in about 1670 to supply a series of portraits of college founders from Alfred the Great to Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham which, for many years, hung in chronological order on a wall in the Gallery near the entrance, interspersed with Sonmans’ Prospect of Oxford, Freke’s cabinet and portrait, and portraits of a few other notables. The nature of Sonmans’ commission remains obscure and the results were never much admired. The effect, however, was to bring a greater historical perspective into the collection, particularly in the years 1670-75 when portraits identified as Thomas Egerton, Duns Scotus, Martin Frobisher, Isaac Casaubon, Joseph Scalinger, Hugo Grotius, William Laud, Thomas Cromwell and Pietro Paolo Scarpi were added from a number of sources. It may have been in this time that Aubrey had marked out a portrait of Erasmus, belonging to a cousin, as a potential addition to the library (Dick 1999, 103).

With a steady influx of portraits after the Restoration, the Gallery came to resemble a portrait gallery in a Jacobean house. Bodley’s house in Smithfield had a room of this kind, probably on the first floor, which combined the functions of book repository and picture gallery (Gibson 1917, 1).The similarity was pointed out in 1806 by James Dallaway who also noted a certain fortuitous likeness between the arrangement of the Gallery in three wings and the ambulatory in the Uffizi (Dallaway 1806, 135). The

The combination of librarian, tour guide and curator in one employee could never have worked well and a new post of janitor or door-keeper to the Picture Gallery was created in 1720 (Macray 1890, 185). The entrance fee 89

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor was then fixed at one penny and was paid to the janitor by all visitors who were not qualified to read in the library (Library Records c.545). This must have been a welcome supplement to his salary which was initially fixed at £2 per annum (Macray 1890, 257, n.1) and no doubt explains why, as Macray notes, the charge ‘subsequently rose by a silent custom to the large sum of a shilling’ (Macray 1890, 186). It was fixed in about 1862 to three-pence, a modest sum and visitor numbers rose as a result (Macray 1890, 186. N.1). Members of the University were not finally exempt from paying until 1842 when an annual payment of £20 was allocated to the janitor to compensate him for the loss of the money he had hitherto received for showing them the collections (Macray 1890, 344). A guided tour would have been welcome and necessary as the exhibits were ill-labelled (Macray 1890, 258). Further information, however, was available in a catalogue of paintings, published by the janitor and sold in the Gallery. The first catalogue of the portraits was compiled in manuscript by Anthony à Wood in about 1679 (Gutch 1796, 95480) while the first published catalogue, a list of seventyeight portraits, written by Thomas Hearne, appeared in 1708 (Hearne 1725, 5) The sitters in Hearne’s catalogue, mostly figures who had played a role in the history of the University, were scrupulously identified but, significantly, apart from a passing reference to Lely, the artists who painted them were not mentioned. This was a work of antiquarian scholarship, published in a magazine, not a handbook for the use of visitors and copies, even then, were very hard to find. When the painter, Wildgoose, restored the frieze of portraits in 1715, he could not put a hand upon a copy and had to apply to Hearne in order to identify the subjects (Hearne 1725, 5). Hearne’s catalogue was, however, revised and reissued in 1725 in a more accessible book form and further catalogues, charting the expansion of the collection, were issued at regular intervals. The first of these was published in 1749 by John Pointer, rector of Slapton in Northamptonshire, in a guide to the ‘antiquities and curiosities of the University of Oxford’ (Pointer 1749, 178-96). By this date, the collection of portraits in the library and Gallery included about 140 items. A further series of catalogues was compiled between 1759 and 1847 by three of the janitors, Nathaniel Bull, William Cowderoy and John Norris, and sold well, to judge by the number of editions and surviving copies. The inadequacy of the labels must have encouraged visitors to buy a catalogue as the door-keepers, who were responsible for publishing them, were no doubt aware and sales fell back after 1856 when more comprehensive and informative labels were introduced (Macray 1890, 258).

dates from after the Restoration, particularly from the long librarianship of Thomas Hyde (1665-1701) when the number of portraits increased rapidly, expanding to include not only Oxford scholars, librarians, clerics and Chancellors, but also scientists, soldiers, monarchs, poets, artists and others who were felt worthy of a place. Many were acquired by gift and bequest but not without some notion of the type of portrait which might be acceptable. Galileo’s portrait was sent from Italy in 1661 by his pupil and biographer, Vincenzo Viviani; his fellow astronomers, Johannes Hewelki and Tycho Brahe followed in 1679 and 1752; the Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, arrived in 1674; a portrait of the satirist, Samuel Butler, was given by Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1701-2 and there were several selfportraits, including Isaac Fuller’s portrait, presented by himself, which attracted much interest, not so much as a work of art but because it was said to have been painted when the artist was drunk. Supposed self-portraits of Raphael and Rembrandt now languish in the basement of the Ashmolean while many other portraits, ambitiously attributed to Holbein, Van Dyck and others, have been similarly demoted. Portraits were acquired as likenesses of famous people, not because they had been painted by artists of distinction. Where in Oxford, asked John Burgon in 1846, shall we turn to find works of art? ‘Probably to the Bodleian picture gallery, which indeed is a charming place to lounge in; and where about ten out of two hundred and forty-five pictures are agreeable specimens of painting’. He noted works by Reynolds with approval but dismissed most as ‘only curiosities. Stiff portraits of cadaverous Scholars, and portentous Founders, and quaint old worthies of all sorts’ (Burgon 1846, 6). Burgon, like many fashion conscious aesthetes then and since, had little sympathy for the taste of an older generation and exaggerated his case. The average quality of the works of art, by the standards of the early nineteenth century, was certainly mild but they included many fine paintings by Van Dyck, Kneller, Ramsay, Batoni, Reynolds and others, many of which have been transferred in stages to the Ashmolean in Beaumont Street. Between the publication of Hearne’s catalogue in 1725 and Bull’s catalogue of 1759, there had been a radical rearrangement of the Gallery. The paintings must have been removed in the 1740s when the walls were lined with wainscoting, funded firstly by Dr Edward Butler, president of Magdalen, and completed in 1749 at the expense of the Duke of Beaufort (Myres 1951a, 45). On this occasion, the Arundel inscriptions were moved out of the gallery to the School of Moral Philosophy and Thomas Bodley’s portrait (ludicrously attributed in Bull’s catalogue to Holbein) was appropriately placed by the entrance. The redecoration was completed in 1753 with the insertion of a rococo plaster ceiling by Thomas Roberts in the Tower Room, the space now occupied by the counter in the Upper Reading Room (Philip 1958. 417). Hubert Le Sueur’s bronze statue of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, presented to the University in 1723 by the earl’s great-nephew, was placed under the new ceiling, near the bust of Christopher Wren now attributed to Edward Pierce but then attributed

In addition to the portraits of the College founders, Anthony à Wood’s list of c. 1679 includes a further twentyeight portraits in the Gallery, eight of which were acquired at an unknown date. These eight might have included a number of acquisitions made before 1660 but, apart from the portraits of Bodley, Bainbridge, Savile and the poet, John Taylor, all the remaining portraits with known dates of acquisition were added after 1660. The list confirms that the first significant period of growth in the collection 90

Jon Whiteley: Picture Gallery in the Bodleian (impossibly) to Roubiliac. Rysbrack’s bust of the Duke of Marborough was located near the entrance in the first window and casts of the Medici Venus and The Apollo Belvedere were placed in the main galleries. The great increase in the collection during the eighteenth century also caused further changes, charted in the various revisions of the catalogue. Hearne’s catalogue of 1725 lists 78 paintings, all of which were portraits. William Cowderoy’s catalogue of 1790 lists 163, of which forty-nine were on the stairs or in the library, including several allegorical and historical compositions (Cowderoy 1790). The next major rearrangement was undertaken in 1831 when the roof and ceiling were reconstructed by Robert Smirke and the painted frieze was covered up. There is some evidence that the walls of the seventeenth-century Gallery were painted blue (Myres 1951, 49). The refurbished gallery, as is evident from the watercolour view by John Nash, exhibited at present in the Upper Reading Room, was painted green.

his hands and face during his escape from England, both presented by Miss Laetitia Lane, daughter of Colonel John Lane who had assisted the prince during his flight from Worcester (Gunter 1925, 273). Throughout the nineteenth century, a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots, given to the gallery in 1806, excited a degree of emotion which the portrait itself, a weak, heavily over-painted portrait of an anonymous sitter, could never have justified on its own. John Gibson Lockhart, Walter Scott’s son-in-law, was particularly eloquent: ‘What luxurious pensiveness in the lips! What irresistible radiance in the eyes – the eye-lids, how beautifully oval; the eye-lashes how long, tender! There is nobody ever inventing the like except Correggio’ (Lockhart 1820, 17). The American diplomat, Robert Walsh, was equally moved: ‘If there was ever a countenance meriting the epithet of lovely in its most comprehensive signification, it was this, which truly ‘vindicated the veracity of Fame’ and in which I needed not the imagination to trace the virtues of the heart’ (Walsh 1836, 983-4). After it had been cleaned on the advice of Sir David Wilkie, the portrait of the Queen disappeared and a ‘wishy-washy’ face (as Nathaniel Hawthorne aptly described it) was discovered underneath. It was a conspicuous fraud but in the eyes of many visitors, it remained a cherished and authentic image. Oliver Cromwell, on the other hand, did not appear among the portraits until 1913. His absence, as Jane Carlyle pointed out to her guide during a visit to the gallery in 1837, was a striking omission, ‘seeing that they had raked together so many insignificant persons of his time’ (Fielding 2004, 47-8).

When Le Sueur’s statue of William Herbert was received by the University, the donor was informed that it had been placed ‘in aede immortalitatis’. The phrase struck Hearne as excessively pompous (Macray 1890, 202) but it aptly suggested the role of the gallery in perpetuating the memory of worthy individuals. Some were no doubt worthier than others but, in general, they were portraits of the virtuous. Given Oxford’s notorious commitment to the Jacobite cause, it is perhaps no surprise to find that the Stuart dynasty was particularly well represented. Several portraits of Charles I and of members of his family found their way into the library between the mid-seventeenth century and the mid-eighteenth century, notably in 1755 through the bequest of Richard Rawlinson, a clergyman with Jacobite sympathies, who was one of the Bodleian’s greatest benefactors. From him came Ramsay’s portrait of the Jacobite heroine, Flora Macdonald, a portrait of Charles I, a portrait of Maria Clementina Sobieski and a portrait of the Old Pretender. The latter, in particular, must have seemed an inflammatory image even in 1755 when the Jacobite threat had subsided and neither it nor the companion portrait of his wife appeared in any of the catalogues and neither saw the light of day until some time between 1860 and 1868 when they were placed in the Gallery by the librarian, H. O. Coxe (Lane Poole 1912, 105). Similarly, the portrait of Flora Macdonald did not appear in the Gallery until the nineteenth century and its existence was not acknowledged in a publication until she appeared in Norris’s catalogue of 1839. Jacobite librarians were tolerated provided they were discreet. In 1712, Hearne was reprimanded for showing a portrait of the Pretender to the naturalist, Thomas Molyneux, a man of ‘republican ill principles’, who repaid the ardent Jacobite by reporting him to the curators. He also showed Molyneux a tobacco stopper said to have been made from the wood of a tree in St James’s Park which had been grown from an acorn collected by Charles II when hiding in the Royal Oak (Macray 1890, 187). He might have added the wooden platter, made from the wood of the Royal Oak, and a cup of walnut, made from wood used by Charles II, to blacken

By the mid-eighteenth century, the collection had developed as a collection of art. Portraits did not become less important but other types of painting began to appear: landscapes, seascapes, genre pictures, historical compositions, allegories and a few Biblical pictures. Dr John King’s bequest of 1739 added paintings of St Andrew, St Paul and St Peter, two large panels of Christ Appearing to the Disciples and Moses striking the Rock, then attributed to Jordaens, two pictures of still-life, a genre picture attributed to Frans Hals and four seascapes by Wieringen, Willaerts, Phillips and a follower of Vroom. Artists had always donated portraits but now began to give other compositions. In 1787, Edward Penny presented two pictures of a novel type, illustrating events from his own times: The Death of General Wolfe and The Marquis of Granby giving Alms to a Poor Family. In 1796, William Martin presented three history compositions, painted by himself: Cardinal Langton and the Barons at St Edmundsbury, an episode from the life of Alfred the Great and a scene of Britomart from Spenser’s Faery Queen. Martin’s paintings have not survived well in critical favour – two of the set are lost and the picture of Cardinal Langton is now rolled up in the basement of the Ashmolean – but he was not without some eminence in his day. The following year, George Simon, second Earl Harcourt, presented a landscape with cottages at Newnham Park painted by himself. According to a label which was once on the frame, 91

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Harcourt ‘in the hope of inciting better artists to follow the example, was the first amateur who presented a picture to the University of Oxford’. To this initiative, the gallery must owe a sequence of gifts from amateurs, presented over the next ten years. These began in 1801 with a ‘sootwater’ drawing of forest scenery by Lord Harcourt’s sister-in-law, the Hon. Mary Harcourt, and a landscape from Sir George Beaumont, and continued in 1806-7 with gifts of paintings from William Cowden (a minor marine painter, patronised by Harcourt), Edward Hamilton, Sir William Elford and Oldfield Bowles, squire of Steeple Aston. To these should be added a fine bust of Bacchus by Anne Damer, Walpole’s niece and heir, to whom Harcourt dedicated a set of etchings, and a panel of needlework from Lady Aylesbury. Perhaps one should also add two large paintings of The Birth of Erichthonius and The Calling of St Matthew, presented in 1801 by the artist, John Skippe, who had been to the University in 1760. A number of Old Masters were given in the same period, few of much merit although they were valued then more than they are now. In 1805, Richard Henry Beaumont, presented a painting attributed to Claude Lorrain which was for long exhibited as such, now in the Ashmolean basement. In 1804, Sir Francis Page, who had represented the University in seven Parliaments, bequeathed a copy of Raphael’s School of Athens, as a ‘small mark of the most profound respect and gratitude, for repeated honours conferred on me by that very great, respectable and learned body’ (Brookes 1929, 244 n.1). It was attributed in Cowderoy’s catalogue of 1806, with some caution, to Giulio Romano, an attribution which stuck to it for many years and it was always much admired. This gift perhaps inspired the Duke of Marlborough three years later to give seven full size copies from the set of ten cartoons by Raphael, formerly in Hampton Court. These copies, then attributed to Sir James Thornhill, were hung on the north wall of the gallery but they seem to have been removed when the wall was lined with bookcases in 1831. They must have taken up a great deal of space and did not reappear until they were transferred to The University Galleries in 1845.

transferred as pictures which might be more appropriate in a gallery of art than in a library. Lady Powlett’s portrait which hung at one time on the library stairs and is not listed by Norris, reappears in the first handbook guide issued by the University Galleries in 1846 (Fisher 1846). Prince Maurice of Nassau’s portrait, which is now in the museum, is mentioned in both of Norris’s catalogues and must have been transferred at a later date. At some stage, Aldrich, Charles XII, Eldon, Frobisher, Hawkins, Flora MacDonald, Montaigne, Strafford, Fuller, Kneller, Taylor and Weichman were returned to the Bodleian where they remain, apart from Ramsay’s Flora MacDonald which came back to the Ashmolean in 1934. All can now be accounted for (with many changes of attribution and of sitter) apart from the portrait of ‘Gainsborough by Stewart’ which must, by a process of elimination, be the anonymous portrait of a young man now in the Ashmolean (inv.no. A65) which is said to have come from the Bodleian. Unfortunately, Norris’s catalogue did not list paintings which were not in public areas of the library, including a number of subject pictures, which had evidently been relegated elsewhere. Several, at least, of the compositions and a number of portraits which are not in Norris’s catalogues may have already gone astray by 1845. Others can be traced to the University Galleries. Joseph Fisher’s handbook of 1846 mentions all the portraits which had disappeared from Norris’s catalogue, apart from those of George Aldrich, Lord Eldon, Montaigne and Zuccaro: but these, for various reasons, would have been appropriate candidates for the new museum and were probably all transferred. Several of the landscape and subject paintings are also missing from Fisher’s catalogue, no doubt because they were not deemed worth exhibiting. Of the six Virtues from the Bodleian, only Hope and Charity were shown. A large painting of the Dutch fleet attributed to Phillips, one of the pictures bequeathed by John King to the Bodleian, was hanging in the Galleries in 1846 but had been taken down by 1848 and its place taken by a Still Life, another of King’s pictures, then attributed to Snyders. The sea-piece subsequently disappeared.

Following the transfer of over seventy paintings to the University Galleries in 1845, including all the landscapes and subject pictures, the Gallery became more exclusively devoted to portraits with links to the history of the University. The portrait of James Paine and his son remained for a few years longer but it, too, was sent eventually to the new museum. Some idea of the extent of the transfer can be gauged by comparing Norris’s catalogue of 1839 with the revised edition of 1847: all 29 landscapes and subject pictures listed in the earlier catalogue disappeared from the later edition: so, too, had 26 portraits then thought to represent the following: George Aldrich, Sir John Chardin, Charles XII of Sweden; Columbus; Lord Eldon; Frederick William of Prussia; Sir Martin Frobisher; Gainsborough; Garrick; the Duke of Grafton; Admiral Hawkins; Louis XIII; Flora MacDonald; Montaigne; Oxenstierna; Strafford; and Van Tromp. Self-portraits attributed to Isaac Fuller, Kneller, Raphael, Rembrandt, John Taylor, Robert Walker, Weichman and Federico Zuccaro were also

The transfer of works to Beaumont Street did not, at first, involve the artefacts in the Gallery, most of which were acquired in the nineteenth century. These included a small collection of items from China, several of which had been taken during the campaign of 1862, a half-burned copy of The Pickwick Papers, found at Sebastopol when the battery was stormed in 1855, and a set of Tudor trenchers, retained by the library no doubt because they are inscribed with verses (Macray 1890, 480). The collection of models of famous buildings, shown in the Picture Gallery, was largely a creation of the earlier nineteenth century, acquired before the appearance of the University Galleries to which, otherwise, they might have gone. Macray’s list includes models of a palace in Gujerat in teak, the cathedral at Calcutta in alabaster, the temple at Paestum in wood, copied by Thomas Wyatt, a local carpenter, from an original in cork, the amphitheatre in Verona made in cork by Richard Dubourg, the Martyrs’ Memorial in paper mâché and Waltham Cross in plaster as well as eight plaster 92

Jon Whiteley: Picture Gallery in the Bodleian models of famous Greek and Roman buildings made by Jean-Pierre Fouquet of Paris which had been bought in 1823 by subscription through the efforts of the Duncan brothers (Macray 1868, 337-8, Kurtz 2000, 150-1). When Frederick Madden visited the Gallery for the first time in December 1823, he was ‘highly gratified’ by the collection of paintings but ‘what pleased me, perhaps, more than all these, were the beautiful models of the Erechtheum, Paestum, the Parthenon, etc, lately added to the collection at an expense of £400 all executed by a French artist’ (Madden, 30 Dec.1823).

lost several of its remaining and most cherished curiosities, including Guy Fawkes’s lantern, Queen Elizabeth’s gloves and the platter made from the wood of the Royal Oak, which were transferred to the Ashmolean in Broad Street. Nicholson vigorously rebuffed suggestions that the coin collection might be similarly transferred but within a year of his death in 1912 the coins, too, had been handed over. Nicholson’s attempt to send Fouquet’s models to the University Galleries had no success but they were eventually given to the School of Architecture in London University. Pierce’s bust of Wren was surrendered to the Ashmolean in 1916 at the request of C. F. Bell: Rysbrack’s bust of Marlborough and Woolner’s bust of Gladstone followed in 1926 (Penny 1992, 144, 154).

The threat overhanging the Gallery which eventually undermined its existence, did not come from rival institutions but from within the library itself. The great expansion of the book collection in the nineteenth century had created a crisis of storage, eased periodically by the formal transfer of the Schools on the first floor for the use of the library: the Anatomy School, home to the former anatomical museum, had been fitted up for books in1788 and was transferred in 1805, along with the School of Jurisprudence. The School of Languages was assigned to the library in 1821. The Arithmetic and Geometry School followed in 1828, the Astronomy School in about 1835. With the transfer of the Pomfret marbles to the University Galleries in 1845, the library took over the Logic School on the ground floor but the remaining Rooms on the ground floor were required for examinations and could not be released until 1882 when the new Examination Schools on the High Street had been completed. But none of these sufficed for the thousands of books which were arriving every year and thoughts inevitably turned towards the Picture Gallery. Books had appeared in the Gallery from an early date. In 1746, the library paid £9. 2/- to a carpenter for making a new bookcase for the Gallery (Myres 1951a, 48) and from 1789, the books in the Gallery were brought under the annual visitation. These would have been the contents of ‘some cases of Books, being intended as a continuation of the Bodleian library’ mentioned in The Pocket Companion for Oxford of 1799 (Anon. 1799, 7). During the refurbishment of 1831, an unpacking room was built along the West end of the North wing, the windows on the North side of the North and South wings were blocked up and bookcases were installed along these walls (Library Records C.545). By the time Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the Picture Gallery in 1856, the books had extended round ‘three sides of a quadrangle, making an aggregate length of more than four hundred feet – a solid array of bookcases, full of books, within a protection of open iron work’ over which the portraits were ranged ‘in long succession’ (Hawthorne 1887, p. 389).

The proposal in 1907 to convert the North wing of the Gallery into a reading room and to install heating concentrated the attention of the University on the status of the Picture Gallery and its relationship with the Bodleian. The Curators of the Chest, faced with a plan to reduce the size of the Gallery by a third, questioned firstly, whether the Curators of the Bodleian had the right to carry out such drastic works without first consulting Convocation and, secondly, ‘whether the Picture-Gallery, though applied to the use of the Library, is so fully under the control of the Bodleian Curators as to be applicable at their discretion for the provision of an additional reading-room’ (Library Records D.201: memo. 23 May 1907). In a lengthy reply, Nicholson reminded the Curators of the Chest that the Picture Gallery was not a distinct institution but came within the unqualified jurisdiction of the library and bluntly refused to submit what he saw as his statutory rights ‘to the decision or arbitrament of any person or body whatsoever’ (Library Records C.545). The case was submitted to J.A. Hamilton KC whose reply, dated 19 June, found in favour of the Bodleian: ‘the Picture Gallery has always been part of the Bodleian Library, as a University Institution, and has always been, in fact, under the Curators’ administration’ (Library. Records C. 545). This was evident from the text of Bodley’s will which had never been modified by statute and which left no doubt that the Gallery was primarily intended for the purposes of the library. The Bodleian, like other older libraries on the continent, consisted in its early days of several interconnected collections of books, works of art and curiosities. These were integrated into the library and the librarians were free within the limits of the statutes to treat the contents as they saw fit. The policy of rationalising the Oxford collections in specialist museums, which started in the seventeenth century and was taken up with energy in the nineteenth century, led to periods when objects in the care of the library were relocated without reference to Convocation. The Picture Gallery, in particular, altered character in response to these developments, evolving from its origins as a cabinet of coins and curiosities into a spacious gallery of portraits. Much of what was transferred in 1845, including several dozen mostly forgettable landscapes and subject pictures, was no great loss to the Gallery which retained several of the best portraits. Following the

On his appointment as librarian in 1882, E. B. Nicholson, with a reforming zeal which Oxford came to know in the course of his librarianship, suggested the transfer of the entire picture collection to the Examination Schools. This was not acted on until 1909, and then only partially, following the conversion of the North wing of the Gallery into an upper reading room (Craster 1952, 203). In 1887, in the old spirit of rationalizing the museums, the Gallery 93

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor transfer, the Gallery continued to grow with the addition of fine portraits of contemporary notables and with a clearer sense of purpose, sharpened by a proposal by the Oxford Historical Society in c.1890 to sponsor a new catalogue. A major programme of restoration by Haines and Son was undertaken between 1903 and 1907 on the initiative of T. W. Jackson, Keeper of the Hope Portrait Collection and a curator of the Bodleian (Craster 1952, 225). This campaign ran in tandem with the exhibitions of Oxford Historical Portraits in 1904 and 1906, held under the auspices of the Oxford History Society, which anticipated the publication in 1912 of the Bodleian portrait collection and other University collections by Rachel Lane Poole.

Bennett, K. 2002. John Aubrey’s Collection and the Early Modern Museum. The Bodleian Library Record 17, 213-45 Brookes, C. C.1929. History of Steeple Aston and Middle Aston. Long Compton, King‘s Stone Press. Bull, N. 1759. A Catalogue of the Several Pictures, Statues, and Busto’s in the Picture Gallery at Oxford. Oxford, N. Bull. Bullard, M. 1994. Talking Heads: The Bodleian Frieze, Its Inspiration, Sources, Designers, and Significance. The Bodleian Library Record, 14, 461-500. Burgon, J. W. 1846. Some Remarks on Art with Reference to the Studies in the University, in a letter addressed to the Rev. Richard Gresswell, D. D. Oxford, Francis Macpherson. (Cowderoy, W.) 1790. A Catalogue of the Several Pictures, Statues, and Busts in the Picture Gallery, Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Oxford, W. Cowderoy. C(raster), H. H. C. 1925. Miscellaneous Donations recorded in the Benefactors’ Register. The Bodleian Quarterly Review 4, 22-4; 68-71 Craster, E. 1952. History of the Bodleian Library 18451945. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Craster, E. 1956. John Rous, Bodley’s Librarian 1620-52. The Bodleian Library Record 5, 130-46. Dallaway, J. 1806. Observations on English Architecture, Military, Ecclesiastical, and Civil. London, J. Taylor. Dick, O. L. (ed.) 1999. Aubrey’s Brief Lives. Harmondsworth, Penguin. Fielding, K. J. (ed.) 2004. Jane Carlyle, Newly Selected Letters, Aldershot, Ashgate. Fisher, J. 1846. Handbook Guide for the University Galleries, Oxford, containing catalogues of the Works of Art in Sculpture and Painting. Oxford, J. Fisher. Garlick, K. 2004. Catalogue of Portraits in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bodleian Library. G(ibson) S. 1917. Bodley’s Library in 1697. The Bodleian Quarterly Review 1, 135-40. Gibson, S. 1940. An Interior. The Bodleian Library Record 1, 132-8. Gunther, R. T. 1925, Early Science in Oxford, vol. iii, Oxford, Oxford Historical Society. Gutch, J. 1796. The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford in two books: by Anthony à Wood, M. A. of Merton College, now published in English from the original ms in the Bodleian Library 2. Oxford, J. Gutch. Hawthorne, N. 1887. The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Boston, Houghton Mifflin. Hearne, T. 1725. A Letter containing an account of some antiquities between Windsor and Oxford, with a list of several pictures in the school and gallery adjoining the Bodleian Library, written 1708. [Oxford?]. (Huddesford) 1772. The Lives of These Eminent Antiquaries John Leland, Thomas Hearne, and Anthony à Wood. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Hunter, M. 1985. The Royal Society’s Repository and its Background. In Impey, O. and MacGregor A. (eds)

The loss of the North wing in 1907, however, inflicted a severe blow on the Gallery and led to the loss of several of the most imposing of the portraits to the Examination Schools. In 1914, the secretary of the exhibition committee, C. F. Bell, teamed up with the sub-librarian, Arthur Ernest Cowley, to rehang the portraits in the Gallery which had been disrupted by the change (Anon. 1915, 177) but the former impetus did not return. The Picture Gallery disappeared, not because it did not have a role, but because the space it occupied was needed by the library and also, one suspects, because the librarians had lost interest. In 1949, the Gallery was closed to allow Clive Rouse to repair the frieze which had recently been discovered under Smirke’s plaster Myres and Rouse 1951b.201; Bullard 1994, 461-500) and to allow the library to fit up of the space for readers. A new reading room in the East wing opened in Michaelmas 1950 but the restoration was not completed until 1955 (Myres and Rouse 1956, 300). Roberts’ plaster ceiling was taken down and inserted into the ceiling in the Upper Archives Room while Lord Pembroke’s statue was removed from the place it had occupied in the Tower Room since 1723 and was relocated to its present position in the library quadrangle (Anon. 1951, 171). The effect of this work was to restore the gallery to something resembling its appearance in 1619 but to remove all traces of the Picture Gallery, apart from a series of portraits which remain above the bookcases in the Upper Reading Room. Bibliography Anon. 1799. A Pocket Companion for Oxford. Oxford, J. Cooke, near the Clarendon Printing House. Anon. 1915. The Picture Gallery. The Bodleian Quarterly Review 1, 177. Anon. 1951. The Pembroke Statue. The Bodleian Library Record 3, 171-3. Anon. 1956. Upper Reading Room Party. The Bodleian Library Record 5, 171. Appleby, J. M. 1997. The Royal Society and the Tartar Lamb. Notes and Records of the Royal Society 51, 2234. Beer, E. S. de (ed.) 1959. The Diary of John Evelyn. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

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Jon Whiteley: Picture Gallery in the Bodleian The Origins of Museums, the Cabinet of Curiosities in sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, 158-68. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Kurtz, D� 2000� The Reception of Classical Art in Britain, Oxford, Beazley Archive/BAR Publishing� Lane Poole, R� 1912� Catalogue of Portraits in the Possession of the University, Colleges, City, and County of Oxford 1� Oxford, Clarendon Press� Lockhart, J� G� 1820� Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, New York, Printed by C. S. Van Winkle, for A. T. Goodrich and Co., Kirk and Mercein, C. Wiley and Co. W. B. Gilley, and James Olmstead. MacGregor, A. 1983. Collectors and Collections of Rarities in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. In MacGregor A.(ed.) Tradescant’s Rarities. Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum 1683 with a Catalogue of the Surviving Early Collections, 70-97. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Macray, W. D. 1868. Annals of the Bodleian Library Oxford with a notice of the earlier history of the library of the University. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Macray, W. D. 1890. Annals of the Bodleian Library Oxford with a notice of the earlier history of the library of the University. Second edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Madden, F. Diary 1819-1872, Bodleian Library Mss. Eng. Hist. C. 140-182 Monconys, B. de 1666. Journal des Voyages de Monsieur de Monconys, conseilleur du Roy en ses Conseils d’Estat et Privé, et Lieutenant Criminel au Siege Presidial de Lyon 2. Lyon, Chez Horace Boissat, & George Remeus. Myres, J. N. L. 1951. The Bodleian Coin Cabinets. The Bodleian Library Record 3, 45-9. Myres, J. N. L. 1951. The Painted Frieze in the Picture Gallery. The Bodleian Library Record 3, 30-51. Myres, J. N. L. and Rouse, C. 1956. Further Notes on the Painted Frieze and other Discoveries in the Upper Reading Room. The Bodleian Library Record 5, 290308. Norris, J. n.d.. A Catalogue of the Pictures, Models, Busts etc. in the Bodleian Gallery and Library. Oxford, printed for the author. Norris, J. 1839. A Catalogue of the Pictures, Models, Busts etc in the Bodleian Library. Oxford, printed for the author. Penny, N. 1992. Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum 1540 to the Present Day. Vol. iii. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Philip, I. G. 1958. Reconstruction in the Bodleian Library and Convocation House in the Eighteenth Century. The Bodleian Library Record 6, 416-27 Pointer, J. 1749. Oxoniensis Academia: or, the Antiquities and Curiosities of the University of Oxford. London, S. Birt. Quarrell, W. H. And Quarrell, W. J. C. (eds) 1926. Oxford in 1710 from the Travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach. Oxford, Blackwell.

Sorbière, S. 1666. Relations d’un Voyage en Angleterre. Cologne, Pierre Michael. Walsh, R. 1836. Didactics: Social, Literary and Political. Philadelphia, Carey, Lea and Blanchard. Welch, M. 1983. The Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum. In MacGregor A. (ed.) Tradescant’s Rarities. Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum 1683 with a Catalogue of the Surviving Early Collections, 40-58. Oxford, Clarendon Press. W(heeler), G. W. 1920, The Bodleian Staff 1600-12. The Bodleian Library Record 2, 310-4.

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Beauvalet de Saint-Victor’s ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’ Claire Lyons Abstract From 1833 to 1836, the French painter Beauvalet de Saint-Victor traveled in Italy and Sicily, where he visited sites and museums of antiquities. Upon his return to France, he produced a series of prints based on drawings of ancient pottery and bronzes. A full set of his prints, titled ‘Vases grecs et étrusques,’ is in the Getty Research Library in Los Angeles. This deluxe volume demonstrates the artist’s innovative use of stencils and pigments custom formulated to imitate the sheen of metal and glossy ceramics. Some illustrations were copied after D’Hancarville’s engravings of vases in the collection of Sir William Hamilton, while others reproduce objects found at Pompeii. Most, however, are whimsical inventions that re-imagine classical subjects in an idiosyncratic style. Beauvalet’s rare plates were acquired by aristocratic collectors and connoisseurs of fine printing, and represent an unusual chapter in the nineteenth-century reception of Greek vases. Keywords Beauvalet de Saint-Victor, Greek vase-painting, history of vase collecting, 19th-century travel in Italy, reception of antiquity, Sir William Hamilton, pochoir prints

In the 1830s, the French artist Beauvalet de Saint-Victor embarked on an extended sojourn in Italy. To experience the great papal galleries of Rome and the marvels of Naples’ subterranean cities was the sine qua non of an artist’s training, and Beauvalet devoted three years there to furthering his career as a print-maker and art instructor. At every destination between Rome and Sicily, antiquities abounded in private cabinets. By the late eighteenth century their desirability was heightened by deluxe publications illustrating the renowned collections assembled by monarchs, diplomats, and connoisseurs. In learned volumes sponsored by the Bourbon court, engravings of sculpture, wall-paintings, and bronzes from Herculaneum were circulated among a select readership. Lavish handcoloured engravings after Greek vases were published by Sir William Hamilton in four folios unsurpassed in the genre of the illustrated art book. Collecting practices entailed not only acquiring rare objects, but also surrounding them with scholarly literature, prints, and drawings after the antique. Capitalising on the enthusiasm that was filling continental museums and libraries with Greek and Roman antiquities, Beauvalet adapted classical forms and ornaments for a suite of decorative prints, which became collectors’ pieces in their own right. An album preserving a complete set of his imaginative designs, titled ‘Vases grecs et étrusques,’ is in the Getty Research Library (Fig. 1).1 Destined for a royal patron, this collection extraordinaire is a fitting tribute to Arthur MacGregor, who encouraged my first researches on Naples as a hub of Greek vase connoisseurship.

pieced together from autograph notes inserted into several of his hand-crafted works. In the course of his career, he gained recognition as a purveyor of limited-edition prints available by subscription. Brief descriptions in booksellers’ catalogues offer a glimpse of his endeavours in fine printing. According to a manuscript preface to an illuminated volume of ‘Prières et Offices,’ Beauvalet was born in Paris in 1780 (Sotheby & Wilkinson, July 29, 1857, no. 41). Known also as the Chevalier de SaintVictor, he described himself as a ‘Peintre minéralogiste,’ a term alluding to his experiments with pigments specially formulated to simulate glossy surfaces and atmospheric effects. His name is mainly associated with three technical and art instruction manuals for amateur artists. To the Roret encyclopedias of technology, he contributed Manuel des peintures orientale et chinoise en relief (1832), a volume that offered lessons in ‘chinese painting,’ a form of stencilling (Saint-Victor 1832). Traveling in Italy between 1833 and 1836, Saint-Victor visited Livorno, Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Sicily, and established himself in Rome where his skills were advertised in the local press. He painted Pope Gregory XVI’s portrait, for which he was awarded a medal of honour (Notes 1857, 118, no. 44). Papal recommendations doubtless helped him gain occasional commissions from prosperous book collectors back in Paris. In the course of his residency in Italy, he issued a second instructional manual, Aquarelle-miniature perfectionée... (Saint Victor 1835). Amateur artists subscribed to chapters that offered step-by-by tutorials on the preparation of stencils, the mixing and application of pigments to create ‘metallic watercolour illuminations,’ and oil painting on black velvet, techniques that produced vibrant three-dimensional visual effects in rich saturated hues. Beginning with elementary subjects such as flowers and butterflies, the lessons progress to the replication of the visual qualities of ancient artefacts. Two albums acquired by the Duchess of Parma, Marie Louise, second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte,

Biographical notes Beauvalet de Saint-Victor, a painter and calligrapher, left behind few traces. Scattered biographical details can be Saint-Victor, M. (Beauvalet) ‘Pompei. Vases grecs et étrusques,’ 1845, acc. 2004.M.14*. The full title on other copies is Vases grecs et étrusques, tant en bronze qu’en couleur de terre, peints d’après sa nouvelle découverte métallique. The author gratefully acknowledges the constructive suggestions of Louis Marchesano, Marcia Reed, Hildegard Wiegel, and Michael Vickers. 1

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Figure 1. Beauvalet de Saint-Victor, ‘Vases grecs et étrusques,’ title page. Courtesy of the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2004.M.14) manual (with J. Saulo) on framing, Nouveau manuel complet du fabricant de cadres, passe-partout, chassis, encadrements (1850). These years saw the dispersal of his work at auction in rapid succession, occasioned by his death around 1858. In this year a portfolio containing four hundred drawings of candelabra, vases, chimney pieces, architectural ornaments, and furniture was auctioned, suggesting that his Italian experiences were translated into designs for decorative arts and interiors.4 Manuscript prayers, books of hours, and ancient and modern calligraphy comprised the remaining contents of his studio, which was sold in 1860 (Duplessis and Soullié, 1896, 18).

demonstrate the success of his technique for reproducing subjects drawn from nature: the first contains eight illustrations of fruits, and a second consists of thirty-three butterfly prints, bound together with three Greek vase prints. (Bonhams New York, 22 June 2011, lot 1164; and San Francisco 13 February 2011, lot 2047). Returning to France in 1836, the artist set about creating prints of Greek and Etruscan vases based on drawings made in Italian collections, which occupied him on and off for the next nine years. During this period he resided in Moulins, where he may have been associated with the publisher of his first technical manual, P. A. Desrosiers.2 Though his business centred on the creation of limited edition portfolios, he apparently also painted, though only one work is attested.3 Beauvalet wrote a second Roret

420, and signed ‘Beauvalet’ though the attributed date of 1886 must be incorrect. 4 ‘Macedoine de dessins,’ Willis and Southeran, A Catalogue of Superior Second Hand Books, May 25, 1858, no. 91. The drawings, made on tracing paper mounted in an atlas folio volume, are untraced. Willis and Southern’s catalogue for January 25, 1859, no. 31, refers to Beauvalet’s death.

An unbound set of broadsheets contained manuscript notes signed by Beauvalet and inscribed ‘Moulins, 1845’: Shapero, 2002, no. 43. 3 ‘Veleros,’ oil on canvas, sold at Subastas Brok, June 16, 2003, Lot 2

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Claire Lyons: Beauvalet de Saint-Victor’s ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’ Bibliophile collectors were the artist’s main clients. Nineteenth-century auction records document several albums, including ‘Prières et Offices’ (1854), a set of calligraphic plates bound in blue morocco with silver clasps in the form of crucifixes, sold at Sotheby and Wilkinson on July 29, 1857. This title or a similar edition appeared again in the sale of Francesco Scalini’s library in 1859 (Catalogue 1859, no. 194). Chicago businessman J. E. Woodhead, a benefactor of the Chicago Art Institute active at the turn of the last century, acquired an ‘Album Calligraphique,’ composed of 120 leaves of initial letters of different periods and styles.5 To judge from entries in nineteenth-century sales catalogues, however, most sought after were the artist’s prints made after classical vases. Bearing the papal arms on its cover, a folio of fifty plates was listed by Willis and Sotheran, a bookseller on the Strand in London, with the following extravagant description:

plates and reduced production costs, and was increasingly utilised for archaeological and travel literature. Responding to the innovative research and printing technologies, Beauvalet took pains to emphasise that his prints were not mechanical reproductions, but original drawings. His success among bibliophile collectors coincided with the rise in arts and crafts as popular domestic pastimes. Reproductive techniques that allowed amateurs to create decorative art prints found a ready audience in nineteenth-century French and British society, where artistic accomplishment was a mark of education. In addition to calligraphy, Saint-Victor’s preferred medium was pochoir, stencils patterned after tracings or line drawings and cut from thin metal sheets. Each stencil was individually coloured and the pigments applied with a short-haired brush (pompon). Swirling the paint within the stencil so that it was thicker toward the edges created the appearance of volume. In Aquarelle-miniature perfectionée, Beauvalet explained his procedure for creating the overall form and painting a base first, with additional cut-out figures applied in sequence and the whole finished with shadows. How-to lessons on simple subjects started students on the path to more complex landscapes, such as sunsets and seascapes, finished examples of which could be purchased separately from the artist. Pochoir had its heyday in French book design later in the nineteenth-century and was favoured for fashion illustration. Particularly effective for linear subjects and repeating bands of floral and geometric decoration, Beauvalet’s superimposed stencils abandon classical conventions and almost seem to anticipate Art Nouveau and Art-Deco styles of the early twentieth century. Manifesting an idiosyncratic vision, the resulting plates reproduce antiquity in the jewel-tones of medieval manuscript illuminations. Immersion in the antiquarian and geological wonders of Naples left a vivid impression on the Chevalier de Saint-Victor, and it was there that he studied Greek and Roman artefacts from local excavations. Aquarelle-miniature perfectionée includes the text of a letter to his brother describing a night-time eruption of Vesuvius in dramatically sensual detail. A favourite subject of Neapolitan gouachistes and their Grand Tour customers, the incandescent colours of molten lava and clouds of ash framing the volcano’s iconic profile must have offered an irresistible subject for the ‘peintre minéralogiste.’6 Metallic paints formulated by Beauvalet were also eminently suited for replicating archaeological objects. To recreate the ruddy earth-tones and shiny black gloss of Attic vases, the artist recommended a pigment mixed from ‘terre de Sienne brulée très-étendue d’eau et melangée de blanc et d’un peu de carmine.’ Etruscan bronze vessels were conjured up using jaune de chrome as a base, followed by bronze d’or en poudre, and bleu de Prusse or couche de carmin in the shadowed areas (Saint-Victor, 1835 p.99, n.6). Graduated colouring and subtle metallic highlights imbue the stencils with the burnished sheen of fired terracotta and the golden

BEAUVALET DE ST. VICTOR, VASES GRECS et Etrusques, 50 large and superb Drawings of Vases, EXQUISITELY COLOURED, in exact imitation of the originals, and further heightened with gold or metallic colours, in a unique style invented by this eminent Painter himself, and having all the appearance of real Bronze, on thick Drawing Paper, surrounded by gold borders, impl. Folio, blue morocco gilt, the Papal Arms on the sides and back, ₤26.10s. Nothing can surpass the exquisite beauty and finish of this perfectly unique series of drawings. These magnificent specimens of the extraordinary talent of this unrivalled artist for Painting Vases and Bronzes was apparently intended for his Patron the Pope, and thus doubtless more than usual labour and care were bestowed on its elaborate execution and finish; but in consequence of the death of the artist it was never presented (Willis and Southeran, 1859, 3, no. 51). Technique ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’ was Beauvalet de Saint-Victor’s most original contribution to print-making. Taking their cue from the engravings of Sir William Hamilton’s Greek vase collection, luxury publications of the early nineteenth century aimed to resurrect antiquity in vibrant colours. When excavators unearthed the subtly hued frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum, they unveiled profusely painted domestic spaces very different from the neoclassical aesthetic normally confined to red-on-black ceramics and gleaming white marble (Lyons and Reed, 2007, esp. 148-52). These discoveries propelled an interest in the question of colour in architecture and sculpture, and how to preserve and record the evidence of polychromy accurately. Patented in 1837, chromolithography at once enhanced the chromatic range possible in hand-coloured The ‘Album Calligraphique’ was sold by the Chicago Rare Book Center in 2005 and in 2012 was with Veach’s Arts of the Book in Northampton, Mass.; it appeared in the 1908 Book Prices Current where it was described as containing 236 initial letters.

Saint-Victor 1835, 224-230: ‘Irruption du Vésuve, au premier Avril 1835 dix heures de soires.’ His pochoir print of this picturesque subject, available for purchase separately, is regrettably not included with the Getty Research Library’s copy of this book.

5

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Beauvalet’s original drawings for the prints were said to have been made in 1815, indicating that he may have been in Italy as a young man prior to his 1833-36 travels (Brunet 1865, 557). Other copies of ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’ were recorded in the libraries of Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, tenth Duke of Hamilton, and noted print collector Felix Slade (Quaritch 1894, 3; Catalogue 1868, 11). In addition to the deluxe album made for Louis-Philippe, surviving portfolios of the Greek and Etruscan vase prints are in the Avery Library at Columbia, the Library of Congress, and the British Library (although the Library of Congress copy was missing as of 2006). Beauvalet issued his plates as fascicles available to subscribers at a price of thirty-two francs per pair, most of which consisted of a terracotta vase and a bronze vessel. The extant albums thus vary in the order and number of plates, from a maximum of forty-eight livraisons (ninety-six plates) to as few as twenty-four plates. Lacking in the Getty volume, the albums in New York and London include a short letterpress preface titled ‘Notice sur les Vases’ (see below, Appendix). A label pasted inside the front cover bears the following manuscript description: ‘Magnifique recueil de dessins au nombre de 97 y compris le titre fait en 1845 par Beauvalet de St Victor d’après les originaux d’Herculanum et Pompei de la Sicile y des Musées d’Italie. Ils sont peints dans leur couleur naturelle, en bronze et en terre avec la plus rare perfection. Ce splendide recueil avait été commandé par le Roi Louis Philippe.’

Figure 2. Beauvalet de Saint-Victor, ‘Vases grecs 18a. Courtesy of the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2004.M.14) et étrusques,’ (Attic black-figured amphora) pl.

glow or dark patina of bronze. With its friezes of silhouette images, black- and red-figured pottery easily lent itself to stencil replication. (Fig. 2) Unlike bourgeois prints of fruit bowls and flower arrangements popular in Victorian drawing rooms, Beauvalet’s Greek vases count among the most inventive applications of the pochoir process for print-making. ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’ Beauvalet assembled the Getty’s suite of ninety-six illustrations for Louis Philippe d’Orléans, who agreed to a price of 4000 francs. The king’s abdication during the 1848 Revolution foiled the artist’s hopes for a lucrative sale. Notes in the July 20, 1857 Sotheby and Wilkinson catalogue suggest that several other European monarchs had ordered copies of ‘Vases grecs et étrusques,’ but apparently none were completed due to the expense (Notes 1857, 118, no. 211). Beauvalet’s royal commission subsequently passed into the library of the art collector and co-founder of a Mediterranean shipping line, Baron Joseph-Louis Léopold Double, but soon after it fetched 400 francs in an 1863 auction at Léon Techener Libraire in Paris. The album was not unique, as another copy was listed among the precious books in Techener’s library, which was consigned to Sotheby and Wilkinson in London and there perished in a fire in 1865. In a ‘funeral oration’ for the Techener library written by Gustave Brunet,

An elaborate illuminated page bearing the title ‘1845 Vases grecs et étrusques Beauvalet,’ is preceded by a frontispiece simply titled ‘Pompei,’ which links the prints to the fame of the Vesuvian town. Numbered I to XLVIII, the plates are followed by a calligraphic table in the form of a medieval calendar, listing brief object titles and media, but lacking any indication of sources or locations of his subjects. The artist’s signature appears on several sheets, either as SaintVictor, St-Victor, or Beauvalet de St-Victor. Pinholes at the corners of the pages mark the positioning of the stencils. Each page illustrates a single example of Athenian, South Italian, and Italic ceramics, alternating with designs for bronze vessels, figurines, chariots, furniture, and armour. Toward the end of the volume are reliefs and devices of the artist’s invention, realised in an extravagantly vibrant palette. A drawing of a stag beetle (pl. XLVII) is unrelated to the other prints, but demonstrates the artist’s capability in the genre of natural history.7 Inspired by the antiquities collections he visited in Italy and Sicily, some of his prints depict ancient artefacts in realistic colours. An Attic pattern lekythos, Apulian dog’s head rhyton, and a kantharos decorated with a female head represent the kind of artefacts that were to be seen in any number of private cabinets of this period (Fig. 3). Several For the stag beetle, see the catalogue entry in Christie’s, Paris, March 23, 2003, lot 166. This subject also appears in Saint-Victor 1832, pl. 4. 7

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Claire Lyons: Beauvalet de Saint-Victor’s ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’

Figure 3. Beauvalet, ‘Vase étrusque,’ (Apulian red-figured rhyton), pl. 2. Courtesy of the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2004.M.14)

Figure 4. Beauvalet, ‘Vase grec,’ (bronze pitcher), pl. 18b. Courtesy of the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2004.M.14)

bronze vessel forms and statuettes of a bull and deer illustrate familiar artefacts known from the excavations at Pompeii.8 Despite distortions introduced by in-painting stencils, his illustrations of a black-figured amphora and an Italic askos are plausible copies of objects that could have been observed during his travels, though they are not easily matched to specific models. In this respect the portfolio constitutes a collection of collections, appropriated from aristocratic private museums in Italy and re-imagined for the elite Continental collector. Despite the claim that his drawings imitated vases worthy of attention for their elegance and mythological scenes, and were produced with ‘minute attention and scrupulous fidelity,’ it is apparent that most of the plates are inventions that blend elements of classical iconography with sheer fantasy. It is possible that some illustrate forgeries, which were common enough in early collections. Beauvalet’s highly stylised renditions, however, betray an inimitable personal style that took broad liberties with shape and iconography. Stencilling encouraged the recombination of ornaments and motifs to devise original classicising designs. Bearing only a general likeness to Greek and Roman art, the drawings range from the whimsical to the outlandish. Most of the bronzes are fanciful pastiches, such as a pitcher that infuses Pompeian style with the patriotic spirit of the French Revolution (Fig. 4). A vessel decorated with the image of a running centaur and sporting elaborate 8 A bronze statuette of bull, similar to votive figurines from Pompeii, is illustrated in Lyons and Reed 2007, 133–55, esp. 150, fig. 17.

Figure 5. Beauvalet, ‘Vase grec,’ (bronze pitcher) pl. 11. Courtesy of the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2004.M.14) 101

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor the same angle as the example in Hamilton’s second volume. Other views of Greek figured vases, not shown frontally but turned slightly to give the fullest indication of the shape, subsidiary decoration, and scene, follow conventions initiated by Hamilton. Beauvalet borrowed eclectically from this and certainly from other influential compendia of classical artefacts. Whether any of his bronze creations were ever realised, or were intended mainly as a display of technical prowess, is unclear. His work remains a curious episode in the nineteenth-century reception of classical antiquities, which was largely mediated by the illustrated art book. The unlikely combination of intricate stencils, skilfully applied in saturated tones and highlighted with metallic powder, produced strangely appealing images that in the artist’s words, at once surprise and seduce. Appendix: ‘Notices sur les vases’9

Figure 6. Beauvalet, ‘Vase étrusque,’ (Corinthian conical oinochoe), pl. 8. Courtesy of the Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (2004.M.14) figured handles finds no close models in antiquity, but springs from the artist’s creative ingenuity (Fig. 5). Far from the natural patina of ancient bronze, iridescent greenish black heightened with metallic pigments produced a glowing image that seemingly floats above the surface of the page. Beauvalet achieved arresting visual affects by layering colors that shift in hue and intensity, and his illustrations found their greatest appeal among aficionados of fine printing.Beyond personal observation and free invention, Beauvalet also drew on a third source for the making of ‘Vases grecs et étrusques.’ Engravings of classical antiquities provided workable models for tracing and cutting stencils. The classical aesthetic, defined by Beauvalet and his contemporaries as ‘pureté des dessins,’ was best captured in outline drawings, and for a time outline engravings were preferred for illustrations of classical art. Neoclassical taste was cultivated by the circulation of reproductive prints and illustrated books, preeminent among which was D’Hancarville’s publication of the Hamilton collection, Antiquités étrusques, grecques, et romaines...( D’Hancarville 1767-1776). Manufacturers, designers, and architects drew inspiration from its illustrations of figured vases for furnishings, interiors, and porcelains. A closer look at Beauvalet’s stencil drawings reveals that he too turned to the Hamilton volumes for models. An Etrusco-corinthian conical oinochoe is identical to one in Hamilton’s first collection of Greek vases (Fig. 6), and a Corinthian kothon is depicted at

La facilité que m’ont procurée mes voyages et longs séjours à Rome, à Naples et dans ses environs, de dessiner une grande partie des vases extraits non-seulement d’Herculanum de Pompei, et de la Sicile, mais encore des nombreuses collections particulières qui ont été mis à ma disposition; de plus, la découverte que j’ai faite de l’emploi des métaux naturels, et la haute faveur dont la daigné m’honorer à Rome, Sa Sainteté Grégoire XVI, à la suite de plusieurs audiences particulières dans lesquelles j’ai soumis à ce souverain pontife, les résultats de mon nouveau procédé métalliques; enfin l’accueil qu’a reçu dans toute l’Italie mon ouvrage in-octavo décrivant ce genre de peinture; tout a concouru pour me décider à faire paraître cette collection extraordinaire de vases, dont plusieurs augustes Personnages ont daignés acquérir les premières exécutions pour leur cabinets. J’ai choisi, autant qu’il m’a semblé, les plus dignes d’attention, tant par leur élégance que par les sujets fabuleux qui y sont représentés. Ces vases presque partout nommés Étrusques, et principalement ceux en terre, sont plus véritablement Grecs, car ce sont les derniers que les Étrusques ont dû considérer comme leurs maitres dans l’art de fabriquer les vases. La plus grande partie de ces vases se trouvait et se découvre encore dans des tombeaux enterrés à peu de profondeur sous terre, à l’exception cependant de ceux qui, par suite de violentes convulsions, se sont trouvés recouvertes par les matières volcaniques sorties de Vésuve et des montagnes voisines; ces tombes étaient construites en pierres ou en briques, et d’une dimension à contenir outre le corps, cinq ou six vases, dont un petit était ordinairement placé près de la tête et principalement à la droite du cadavre. La quantité de ces vases variait, d’ailleurs, selon la qualité ou dignité du personnage. On ne pouvait et on ne peut donc nommer, comme cependant erreur a existé, ces vases 9 The text of Beauvalet’s ‘Notice sur les vases’ reproduced here was transcribed from the volume in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.

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Claire Lyons: Beauvalet de Saint-Victor’s ‘Vases grecs et étrusques’ urnes cinéraires, puisqu’ils ne contenaient aucune cendre, et qu’ils se trouvaient placés près du squelette même des corps non brûlés. On ne connaît pas parfaitement le motif par lequel ils étaient placés dans les tombeaux; on ne peut que présumer qu’ayant servi à des cérémonies religieuses, ils étaient des lors considérés sacrés et déposés dans la tombe de ceux qui avaient été initiés à quelques mystères; car tous les tombeaux ne contiennent pas de vases, la plus grande partie rien ayant aucun. J’ai vu dans la rue de Sépulcres, à Pompéi, des chambres dans lesquelles étaient pratiquées tout autour de nombreuses niches, qui contenaient de grandes quantités de vases, Il est des chambres souterraines où l’on a trouvé jusqu’à cinquante et soixante de ces vases, dont quelquesuns ayant des anses, étaient accrochés à des clous scellés dans la muraille; dans le nombre il y en avait de prodigieux par leur grandeur, et de trés-curieux par les sujets qu’ils representaient. Les mausolées étaient considérés comme ayant été destinés à de hautes personnages. Une grande quantité d’autres vases, servant sans doute à divers usages domestiques ou de luxe, ont également été trouvés enfouis sous terne découverts avec des débris d’armures, de lampes en bronzes, d’orfèvrerie, etc. C’est à Herculanum surtout qu’a été déterrée la plus grande partie d’objets en métal. Quelques-uns de ces vases étaient mutilés; d’autres bien conservés étaient enrichis d’ornements remplis d’élégance, parmi lesquels il s’en trouvait ayant la forme de médaillons et d’étoiles en argent incrustés dans le bronze. Beaucoup de sujets représentés sur les vases en terre, et qui sont, soit en couleur jaunes sur un fond noir, soit en noir sur un fond jaune ou rouge de brique, sont nonseulement tirés des cérémonies des fêtes de Bacchus, mais aussi, évidement pris dans l’Iliade et l’Odyssée d’Homère, ainsi que d’autres anciens auteurs grecs. Quelques-uns représentent des exercices de jeux gymnastiques, et l’on sait que dans ce temps, un vase était quelquefois le prix du vainqueur; d’autres, des courses de chevaux, ainsi que des quadrupèdes et des oiseaux aux formes bizarres, etc. Tous ces sujets sont exécutés avec une teinte plate sans aucune ombre; seulement quelques-uns ont les accessoires marqués par des filets noirs ou rouges, et même blancs, suivant la couleur locale sur laquelle ils doivent trancher. Cependant la peinture demandant de l’effet, et voulant à mes sujets un relief qui existe dans les modèles en bronze, j’ai cru devoir les ombrer dans tout leur contour, et porter une bande vive de lumières vers la partie éclairée; ce qui a été trouvé d’un effet admirable, dans ce genre de peinture surtout; tant il est difficile de deviner comment cet effet est obtenu. J’ai conservé avec la plus minutieuse attention et la plus scrupuleuse fidélité, toute la pureté des dessins qui j’ai été à même de voir représentés et répétés sur des vases de différentes formes et qualités. Dans mes vases en bronze, le métal est beaucoup plus brillant que celui des vases presque noirs, découverts après des siècles de séjour sous terre: ai-je mal fait, dans

cette premières collection, de vouloir les représenter dans leur état primitif et non gâtés ni souillés par le temps et les événements? C’est ce dont on ne m’a adressé jusqu’à présent aucun reproche. Au surplus, dans une des livraisons, j’en exécuterai un brisé et ayant son bronze alteré et noirci comme ceux qui ont été longtemps recouverts de matières volcaniques; tel enfin que le désireraient peutêtre messieurs les antiquaires sévères, au service desquels je serai toujours; en cas d’appel de leur part, pour peindre les collections naturelles qu’ils pourraient posséder. Je n’ai, jusqu’à ce moment, rencontré personne qui exécutât ce genre de peinture en véritable bronze de couleur antique, que j’ai découvert, e qui a tant surpris et séduit tout à la fois: cette collection sera donc unique, et ce qui doit ajouter à son prix, c’est le petit nombre d’exemplaires auquel elle sera nécessairement restreinte, puisque seul je puis l’exécuter avec mes pinceaux. J’ose espérer que les amis et protecteurs des arts accorderont aide et encouragement, comme ils rendront justice au bonnes intentions de leur dévoué serviteur, SAINT-VICTOR

Bibliography Catalogue 1859. Catalogue des livres rares curieux et singuliers de M. Scalini de Como (Lombardie). Paris, François. Catalogue 1868. Catalogue of the Exceedingly Choice and Valuable Library of the late Felix Slade, Esq. London, Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge. Brunet, G. 1865. Catalogue de livres rares et curieux. Bulletin du Bouquiniste 17, 555-558. d’Hancarville, P. 1766-76. Antiquités étrusques, grecques, et romaines tirées du cabinet de M. Hamilton. Naples, François Morelli. Soullié, L. and Duplessis, G. 1896. Les ventes de tableaux, dessins, et objets d’art au XIXe siècle (1800-1895); essai de bibliographie. Paris, Librairie des catalogues de ventes L. Soullié. Lyons, C. and Reed, M. 2007. ‘The Visible and the Visual: Illustrating Pompeii and Herculaneum in the Getty Research Institute Collections,’ in Jon Seydl and Victoria C. Gardner Coates (eds), Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, esp. 148-52. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. Notes 1857. Notes on recent book sales. Notes and Queries, August 8, 1857, 118-20. Quaritch, B. 1894. Contributions Toward a Dictionary of English Book-Collectors. London, Bernard Quaritch. Saint-Victor, M. 1832. Manuel des peintures orientales, et Chinoise, En Relief, accompagné des principaux termes techniques qu’il faut employer pour les sujets qui y sont traités, et pouvant servir de premières notions sur la botanique et l’histoire naturelle, suivi d’un vocabulaire de ces termes classés alphabétiquement. Paris, Roret and Moulins: Chez P.-A Desrosiers fils. Saint-Victor, Chevalier 1835. Aquarelle-miniature perfectionée. Reflets métalliques et chatoyans et 103

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor peinture à l’huile sur velours en six leçons sans maître et sans qu’il soit nécessaire d’avoir aucune notion de dessin, suivies de moyens pour esquisser de suite d’après la nature, avec toute les réductions progressives que l’on désire. Milan, Felix Rusconi and Paris, Giroux. Shapero, B. 2002. Fifty Fine Books. London, Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books. Willis and Southeran, 1859. A Catalogue of Superior Second Hand Books 42, January 25. London, Willis and Southeran.

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The reception of the van Branteghem collection in Belgium Athena Tsingarida Abstract In 1892, the van Branteghem collection consisting of clay figurines and Greek vases, prized by connoisseurs and scholars, was dispersed in Paris at the auction house of Drouot. During the months preceding the sale, a fierce debate took place in Belgium between those who supported the purchase of the collection by the state and those who opposed it. This paper studies the milieu that supported the purchase and expressed a deep interest in Antiquity. It shows that avant-garde artists of Art Nouveau and symbolism, as well as liberal politicians, were at the forefront of the movement. Both groups wished to expand the collection of Classical antiquities in the Musée royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, the national museum created in Brussels on the model of the South Kensigton Museum in London (now the Victoria and Albert). Further light is shed on the motivations of this group of connoisseurs and the existing links between Belgian Art Nouveau, symbolism and Classical Antiquity. Artists and amateurs saw antiquities, and especially Archaic Greek vases, as aesthetic models for contemporary arts and crafts, while liberal politicians wanted to combine both Classical Antiquity and the Medieval past in order to create a new cultural identity for the young Belgian state. Keywords Greek vases, Classical antiquity, 19th-century Belgium, national collections, art and craft movement.

The van Branteghem collection in Brussels had an acknowledged influence on the connoisseurship of Greek vases at the turn of the 19th century, and played a significant part in the formation of the collections of several European and American museums. It was prized by amateurs, and its importance recognized by many scholars such as Cecil Smith, then Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, who described it thus: ‘the collection of Mr van Branteghem will be a revelation to those who do not know with what zeal and success he has been collecting during the past two years’ (Smith 1888, 189). The vases were used in the studies and publications of individual vase-painters’ styles written by leading scholars such as Wilhem Klein, Paul Hartwig and Adolf Furtwängler. Alphonse van Branteghem, a Belgian lawyer who divided his time between Constantinople, London and Brussels, formed his collection of ancient Greek clay figurines and vases within a very short time (1884-1892). Initially interested in figurines, he very soon became an amateur of signed and inscribed vases and managed to purchase rare and famous pieces such as those from the Sotades Tomb (now shared among the British Museum, the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire of Brussels and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), the Euphronios cup in Boston (95.27) or the Oikopheles plate in the Ashmolean Museum (G. 243 [V. 189]). I have discussed the man and his collection elsewhere (Tsingarida 2002, 245-273). In 1892, while he was still living in Brussels, van Branteghem was forced to sell his collection at the auction house of Drouot in Paris. Despite the many efforts undertaken by Belgian academics, politicians and artists, it was not purchased in toto by the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels, and was mainly dispersed throughout various European and American museums. At

the sale, the Brussels museum made the acquisition of only a few pieces while a few more arrived through the sale of the Somzée collection a few years later.

The paper discusses several issues:



- Taking the collection as a starting point, it examines its role and that of classical antiquity in the avant-garde movements of late nineteenthcentury Belgium.



- It further focuses on the debate that arose in 1892 about the purchase of the collection by the Belgian state for the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire and discusses the social and political background of those who supported the acquisition.



- It studies the arguments exchanged between both supporters of and opponents to the purchase in order to better understand the various conceptions about the place of classical art in the creation of a cultural identity for the young Belgian nation.

The Brussels period before the sale (1889-1892): Antiquity and Art Nouveau According to the collector’s correspondence with Wilhelm Fröhner (1834-1925, former curator at the Musée du Louvre), a friend and advisor in antiquities, Alphonse van Branteghem settled in Brussels in April 1889 (Weimar, GSA 107/227 (6), 17.01.1889). He lived in an elegant town house in Ixelles, a rising suburb of the town shared by artists and wealthy bourgeois. Although we know no photograph of the house, descriptions made by van Branteghem provide us with information about the way the collection was displayed. Vases and clay figurines were exhibited in wooden cases, similar to those ordered 105

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 1. The show cases of style ‘Sage’, displayed in the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels in 1905 (©Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire).

by van Branteghem few years later for the Museum, which may be found in the storerooms and are still visible in old photographs (Figure 1) (Weimar, GSA 107/227 (6), 21.10.1901). In a letter (Weimar, GSA 107/227 (6), 18.04.1889), the collector describes the objects in a gallery, specially built and decorated with features inspired from the recent archaeological discoveries in the Athenian Acropolis: ‘Ma galerie sera très réussie mais comme j’exige que les moindres motifs soient empruntés aux monuments de l’Acropole d’Athènes, je dois suivre les peintres tous les jours, les empêcher de dévier de mon principe…’ (Weimar, GSA 107/227 (6), 15.05.1889).

While in Brussels, van Branteghem also met Belgian academics such as Alphonse Willems (1839-1912), Professor of Greek at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) (Leroy 1962, 738-739) and Auguste Wagener (1829-1896), Professor of Classics at the University of Ghent (Cumont 1913, 148-153). He shared with the latter a common interest in inscriptions that probably explains why he sent him a copy of the exhibition catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club where his collection had played a significant part in order to present it to the Royal Academy of Belgium. It is useful for our purpose to quote a passage from the lecture made by Wagener when he introduced the catalogue and the collection in 1891 at a meeting in the Academy :

His concern in reproducing decorative patterns from archaeological finds must be paralleled with his interest in building a collection of not only aesthetic but also scholarly value. It was already noted that A. van Branteghem was close to several famous specialists in Greek pottery, such as Wilhelm Klein, Paul Hartwig, and Adolf Furtwängler, who used a large number of his vases in their studies, and visited his house in order to study closely objects from the collection (Tsingarida 2002, 245-273).

… L’art hellénique a été pendant quelque temps, en Belgique aussi bien et peut-être plus même qu’ailleurs, relégué au second plan. On le croyait, en effet, bien à tort, représenté complétement par l’école de David, qui, certes, ne répondait plus à nos aspirations. Il en est résulté que, d’un côté, par un excès de romantisme, on a mis au premier rang l’art du moyen âge, tandis que, d’autre part, par une réaction excusable, on s’est lancé en plein dans le naturalisme. Heureusement on commence à comprendre aujourd’hui que ce n’est 106

Athena Tsingarida: The reception of the van Branteghem collection in Belgium ni l’art mystique du moyen âge, ni le naturalisme contemporain qui nous ramèneront dans les grandes voies de l’art. … Les découvertes étonnantes [de l’art grec] faites dans ces derniers temps montreront à nos artistes des voies nouvelles, …et une étude attentive de la collection Van Branteghem pourrait, dans notre pays, contribuer puissamment à cette heureuse renaissance [emphasis added] (Wagener 1891, 8).

Horta (1861-1947) and Henry van de Velde (1863-1957), or by painters belonging to the Groupe des XX, such as James Ensor (1860-1940), Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) or Georges Seurat (1859-1891) or other movements such as the Pre-Raphaelites (Aron and Soucy 1998, 36-37). When the sale of the van Branteghem collection was decided upon, L’Art Moderne published several letters, signed by most prominent artists and liberal politicians, to support the purchase of the whole collection by the Belgian state.

Wagener points to several distinctive features of the reception of classical past in 19th-century Belgium : the lack of interest in Greek antiquities and the scarcity of large collections of Classical antiquities; the influence of classical art through neo-classicism that had developed in Belgium under followers of the painter Jean-Louis David, such as François Joseph Navez; and the leading role of both Medieval art and the Gothic revival in a romantic definition of the national identity of the young state, founded in 1830.

The sale (16-18th June 1892): arguments and discussions about the definition of a national heritage

When the author mentions the ‘astonishing recent discoveries of Greek art’, he probably refers to the recovery of Archaic art that occurred through the influence of the new statuary found on the Athenian Acropolis and in the sanctuary at Delphi from the 1880s onwards: ‘Grâce aux fouilles de Monsieur Homolle à Delphes et de M. Kavvadias sur l’Acropole d’Athènes, l’art archaïque est aujourd’hui connu par une longue série de monuments’ (Reinach 1891, 428-430). A significant number of vases from the van Branteghem collection are dated to the Archaic period, and van Branteghem clearly states in several letters his preference for this style (e.g. Weimar GSA 107/227, 01.05.1888). In the conclusion of his lecture delivered at the Academy, Wagener sees Archaic arts and crafts, such as pottery, as the potential source of artistic regeneration. He clearly had in mind the experiments of Art Nouveau in Belgium, a country that produced important artists in this new trend. Following the Arts and Crafts movement that flourished in Great Britain from the 1860s, this new form of art took root in Belgium from the mid-1880s and aimed to educate the taste of the lower classes (Aron 1995, 38). Politicians, artists and writers who played a role in the birth and diffusion of Art Nouveau shared with van Branteghem an interest in antiquities and clearly state in their writings that antiquity must become a source of inspiration for contemporary art (Verhaeren 1890, 393-394). Further evidence suggests direct connections between several actors in this movement and van Branteghem the collector. In an article published in the daily newspaper, La Nation, the symbolist poet and writer Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916) announced a forthcoming exhibition of the van Brateghem collection in the art society Le Cercle artistique (Verhaeren 1891). Verhaeren played an active part in the avant-garde review L’Art Moderne that supported new experiments and innovations led by the architects and co-founders of Belgian Art Nouveau Victor

In a letter dated to the 17th March 1892 (Weimar GSA 107/228 [2]), Alphonse van Branteghem announced his decision to sell his collection without further explanation, and stated that time was short if the auction was to be organized before the deadline fixed by Drouot on the 10th June. The collection was exhibited in the newly established Musées royaux des Arts décoratifs et industriels in the Parc du Cinquantenaire (La Gazette, 14 April 1892; cf. Verhaeren 1892) from 14 April until the time of the sale that took place in Paris on 16-18 June 1892 (Collection van Branteghem 1892). The display at the museum attracted a wide public and several articles extolled the exhibits: ‘Jeudi a eu lieu au Musée des Echanges et des Arts décoratifs l’ouverture de l’exposition de cette superbe collection. Un nombreux public d’artistes et de lettrés y assistait et cela a été une vraie fête d’art’ (L’Art Moderne, 14 April 1892, 124). Newspapers and magazines provide us with further evidence for the strong arguments exchanged about the dispersion of the collection. The head of the museum, Baron Prosper de Haulleville (1838-1898), greatly desired to keep the whole collection and proposed that the Belgian government should purchase it at a price agreed by van Branteghem and set by two experts, Wilhelm Fröhner and William T. Ready (1857-1914) (La Gazette, 30 June 1892). According to the Archives of the museum and the articles published after the sale, the proposition was rejected both by the special committee of the museum and the government (L’Art Moderne, 3 July 1892). This committee was set up in 1889 when the Musées royaux des Arts décoratifs et industriels (the future Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire) were created in the Parc du Cinquantenaire following the model of the South Kensington Museum in London (the future Victoria and Albert Museum) to provide a source of inspiration to modern industry and crafts as well as to educate a wide public (Annales parlementaires, Chambre, séance du 21 mai 1885, intervention du ministre catholique Alain Moreau). The committee was attached to the new department of antiquities that covered not only Classical antiquities but also ancient arts and crafts, from Prehistory to the Middle Ages and Far Eastern antiquities, the so-called ‘Anciennes Industries d’art’ (Montens 2008, 293-294). Formed by collectors, academics and connoisseurs, it was meant to advise and help the curators 107

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor on museum matters and acquisition policy. From the start, a majority of its members with the support of the keeper of the department, Joseph Destrée (1853-1932), a specialist of tapestry, statuary and metalwork, did not consider the development of Classical antiquities to be a priority for the museum (Montens 2008, 293). The total cost of the van Branteghem collection was estimated to 500,000 francs, and they explained that ‘la forte somme dont il s’agissait pouvait être plus avantageusement employée à compléter nos collections d’art national’ (quoted in La Gazette 1st July 1892). National antiquities, including Medieval and Baroque art, were occasionally seen as part of a local heritage that built a Belgian identity and were therefore privileged by some cultural and political authorities. In his report on the acquisition of the Campana collection in 1901, the young keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities, Jean De Mot, deeply regrets this state of mind that existed since at least the middle of the 19th century, and did not permit the steady development of the Classical collection (Sarti 2008, 190; Sarti 2012, 13). There were however a number of intellectuals, artists and scholars contemporaries of van Branteghem who strove against this attitude. Emile Verhaeren wrote with anger: En tel pays voisin, il n’y aurait aucune hésitation de la part d’un gouvernement à s’enrichir d’un coup de tant de merveilles; chez nous, l’indifférence est à tel point scarifiée, qu’on tergiverse…. une commission administrative votera contre, parce que tel membre, amateurs exclusif de faïences de Delft, reprochera aux vases corinthiens de n’avoir pas été fabriqués en Hollande; tel autre, fervent impérieux de grès et de buires, s’emportera sur les rhytons et les lécythes parce qu’ils ont été façonnés ailleurs qu’à Raeren; tel autre, parce qu’une amphore n’est pas une coupe, ni une coupe une amphore; […]En Belgique, l’imbécilité est surtout professionnelle[….] Réussira-t-on, à force de les signaler à l’attention du publique et à l’examen des artistes et à la sollicitude de l’Etat, à empêcher que cette sélection d’art soit coupée en lambeaux et en loques? (Verhaeren 1892). After learning that the government refused to sustain the purchase, de Haulleville formed a group to create a lottery and to issue credit. A list of the people who signed this proposal is provided by La Gazette (1 July 1892) and L’Art Moderne (1 July 1892): François-Auguste Gevaert (1828-1908, scholar and musician), Alphone Willems, Jacques de Lalaing (1858-1917, sculptor and painter), Thomas Vinçotte (1850-1925, sculptor), Ernst Slingeneyer (1820-1894, painter), Charles Potvin (1818-1902, writer), Edmond Picard (1836-1924), Auguste Wagener and Léon Dommartin (1839-1919, painter). Apart from neo-classical artists such as Jacques de Lalaing and Thomas Vinçotte and to classicists such as Alphonse Willems and Auguste Wagener, the leading members of this circle were liberals and innovators who proposed a change in art, education and politics. François-Auguste Gevaert (1828-1908) was the Director of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and

published several volumes on music in antiquity. He believed that music was the art of the 19th century and had to be part of the programme of national education following the model of ancient Greece where, according to him, music was a ‘social art’ open to all classes (de Seyn, 1935). The painter Ernst Slingeneyer, elected to parliament as member of the small independent group (Solvay 1914), also argued in his speeches for an education addressed to the lower classes, combining traditional matters and art (Annales parlementaires, Chambre, séance du 21 mai 1885). Charles Potvin (Vanwelkenhuyzen 1968), Léon Donmarti and Edmont Picard studied law in the Université libre de Bruxelles and were involved in politics. They shared anticlerical positions with Auguste Wagener and supported, either through their writings or political action, the development of State schools freed from the authority of the Catholic church. They were interested both in the Classical past and in contemporary trends in literature, painting, music and other arts. Edmont Picard was not only a prominent lawyer and a progressive politician but also an important patron of modern art. He was the founder member of L’Art Moderne (1881) and of the Salon de la Libre Esthétique (1894). He opened to the public his own house, called La Maison d’Art, where he exhibited Art Deco objects and led the way to the Belgian Arts and Crafts movement that proposed a social art made for educating people and improving their living conditions with fine interior decoration (Aron 1995, 25-42). By examining the writings published by members of this group, it is possible to summarize their attitude towards Classical antiquities. I have already mentioned that Auguste Wagener, one of the signatories of the lottery project, suggested in his report on the van Branteghem collection addressed to the Royal Academy that antiquities should contribute to the renaissance of Belgian arts. Antiquities were further acknowledged to be models for modern artists. Regarding the vases and terra-cottas from the van Branteghem collection, they were objects especially prized, most probably because they are seen as a source of inspiration for contemporary arts and crafts produced in Belgium at the time to embellish interiors following the Art Nouveau designs proposed by La Maison d’Art: D’Euphronios, une coupe magnifique attire par sa force et ses lignes sans pareilles (former van Branteghem coll. n°52, now Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 95.27) […] On disait un jour à Burne Jones qu’Euphronios était le Raphaël des potiers grecs. N’insultez pas Euphronios’ dit le grand peintre anglais…l’art du potier était tenu en haute estime dans cette Grèce esthétique qui savait rendre aux artistes le culte que l’on doit professer envers eux […] Bien des choses seraient à dire à propos de ces vases mais il nous faut borner à signaler encore … ces vases exquis à fond blanc, uniques, délicats comme ces porcelaines qu’on dénomme ‘coquilles d’œufs’ et dont l’un, représentant le Jardin des Hespérides (former van Branteghem coll. No. 64, the Sotades cup, London, British Museum D8) offre une délicieuse et savante merveille de dessin aussi 108

Athena Tsingarida: The reception of the van Branteghem collection in Belgium piquante qu’un croquis de Rops ou de Forrain (Belgian symbolist painters)… (L’Art Moderne, 24 April 1892: La collection van Branteghem). According to the van Branteghem supporters, the acquisition of a collection much admired by contemporary scholars, academics and amateurs would also help to develop and complete a national collection of antiquities. Such a purchase would upgrade the section of antiquities of the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire and would bring it to a level similar to those of other important European museums: Il ne faut pas qu’elle [the van Branteghem collection] ne sorte pas de la Belgique! elle est connue et appréciée dans tous les pays – et la garder ici ne serait-ce pas un élément réalisé en vue de ce rêve: faire de la Belgique une patrie d’art, au milieu de l’Europe? (L’Art Moderne, 17 April 1892, 130). Le conservateur en chef des Musées royaux aurait désiré que cette splendide collection fut acquise, toute entière, par l’Etat. Alors avec le fonds Campana et le fond de Meester de Ravestein, notre Musée d’arts anciens aurait, pour l’art industriel grec, pu rivaliser avec les premiers musées du monde.’ (L’Art Moderne, 3 July 1892) It is probably significant that a strong position against the purchase of the van Branteghem collection was taken by the Catholic government and the minister along with conservative newspapers such as La Gazette. Both parties pointed out the importance of the regional, so-called national antiquities, and of Medieval and Baroque art, in the formation of the collections of the museum. On the other hand, a different conception of national heritage spread from the liberal milieu to which belonged Edmont Picard, Emile Verhaeren, Auguste Wagener, Alphonse Willems and others, who wanted to keep the whole van Branteghem collection in Brussels. According to them, Greek antiquities were the highest reference for artists. They belong to a universal heritage common to all mankind : ‘tous ceux qui doivent quelque chose à la Grèce antique, et quel est l’homme cultivé qui n’est pas son débiteur reconnaissant’ (Buls, 1893, 32; Piette 2008, 157-178). And as such, antiquities needed to have a prominent place in the new Belgian state and in the collection of a national museum that aimed to educate the general public.

Only a very few items (six in all) were finally acquired directly at the sale for a total cost of 28,119 francs (Montens, 2008, 294). Among them, the two white ground cups from the Sotades Tomb (A890-A891), a well known red-figure cup attributed to Onesimos (A889) (Figure 2) and a superb figured vase of the Classical period (A892) (Figure 3). According to the report published in the Belgian newspapers (L’Art Moderne, 26 June 1892), the Belgian representatives also tried to purchase two other vases but eventually did not follow the bidding. Both pieces were sold for 10,500 francs. A red-figure cup, signed by Euphronios as potter, was purchased by John Marshall and is now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (95.27), and a white-ground cup decorated with Glaukos from the Sotades Tomb was acquired by the British Museum (D9) At the sale, the Belgian collector, Léon Somzée (18371901, Evers 2002, 275-298) acquired several objects, vases and terracottas. The Museum had therefore the opportunity to purchase a few more pieces in 1901 when a part of the Somzée collection was sold. According to the annotated sale catalogue in the library of the museum, the curator Franz Cumont (1868-1947) played a part in the acquisition of important vases as it is shown by his comment ‘à acheter à tout prix’. Among them we may mention the Corinthian œnochoe A4, the Attic white-ground lekythos A1020, the Attic squat lekythos A1021. It is also probable that van Branteghem helped with the acquisition of a few other objects that were formerly in his own collection since at the time of the Somzée sale, he was a member of the committee of the museum and followed the sale closely; he wrote the entries for the catalogue of Greek vases (Weimar GSA 107/228, 08.02.1901, 27.03.1901, 19.06.1901).

The van Branteghem collection in the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire The Belgian government did not purchase the whole collection but eventually issued a credit of 50,000 francs and sent two representatives to the sale. Guillaume De Groot (1836-1922), a sculptor and member of the committee of the museum and Gustave Vermeersch (18411911), the owner of an important collection of porcelain from Tournai that would be later bequeathed to the Museum (L’Art Moderne, 26 June 1892, 206).

Figure 2. Interior of the red-figure cup, attributed to Onesimos. Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire A889 (©Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire). 109

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor

Figure 4. Attic red-figured skyphos signed Pistoxenos epoiesen. Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire A11 (©Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire).

Figure 3. Figure vase. Brussels Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire A892 (©Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire).

Figure 5. Hadra hydria with the name Timokles inscribed. Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire A13 (©Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire).

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Athena Tsingarida: The reception of the van Branteghem collection in Belgium Eventually, two remaining pieces (A1377, A1378) were bought directly from Somzée (1892-1904) in 1902 through the assistance of the dealer Jean Fivez who organized the 1901 sale (Weimar GSA 107/228, 13.04.1902).

A1027 (251, Somzée No. 22) Rhodian (?) figured vase A1033 (319) terracotta figurine, satyr A1375 (208, Somzée No. 18) Attic black-figure pyxis A1376 (3, Somzée No. 22) Attic black-figure pinax [in the Louvre, exchanged with an Attic geometric amphora] A1377 (41, Somzée No. 38) Attic red-figure cup A1378 (13, Somzée No. 41) Attic red-figure cup

Thus, despite the lack of interest in antiquities from the Belgian government, the museum managed to acquire several valuable objects from a collection which was much prized by contemporary scholars and connoisseurs through its curator Franz Cumont and with the aid of the collector himself. Acknowledgements: Thanks are due to Hildegard Wiegel and Michael Vickers for the invitation to contribute to this volume in honour of Arthur MacGregor ; to Fabrice van de Kerckhove (Bibliothèque royale de Belgique) for guidance through the 19th century Belgian press; to N. Massar (Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire) for access to relevant archives and for photographs; and to Cécile Evers (Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire) for her warm and constant support.

Appendix List of the objects from the van Branteghem collection in the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire Note : The entry starts with the museum inventory number. The catalogue number of the van Branteghem collection is given in brackets, followed by the Somzée number where relevant. A2 (214, Somzée No. 7) Corinthian aryballos A4 (226, Somzée No. 226) Corinthian œnochoe A10 (87, Somzée No. 98) Attic red-figure skyphos A11 (64, Somzée No. 46) Attic red-figure skyphos, signed by Pistoxenos (fig. 4) A13 (237, Somzeé No. 35) Hadra hydria, Timokles inscribed (fig. 5) A889 (77) Attic red-figure cup A890 (163) Attic white-ground cup A891 (167) Attic white-ground and coral-red cup, signed by Hegesiboulos A892 (272) plastic vase, female figure A893 (300) bowl with relief decoration A901 (233) Campanian kantharos A903 (186) Attic white-ground lekythos A904 (187) Attic white-ground lekythos A1020 (171, Somzée No. 94) Attic white-ground lekythos A1021 (169, Somzée No. 97) Attic white-ground square lekythos A1022 (198, Somzée No. 102) Attic white-ground lekythos

Bibliography Weimar, GSA. Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Nachlass Wilhelm Fröhner. Aron, P. and Soucy, P. Y. 1998. Les revues littéraires belges de langue française de 1830 à nos jours. Brussels, Ed. Labor. Aron, P. 1995. Edmond Picard et l’Art Moderne. In Les écrivains belges et le socialisme (1880-1913), 25-42. Brussels, Ed. Labor. Buls, Ch. 1893. Le pélerinage d’Olympie. Annales de la Société d’archéologie de Bruxelles, 13. Collection van Branteghem. 1892. Vases peints et terres cuites antiques dont la vente aux enchères aura lieu à Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Les Jeudi 16, Vendredi 17 et Samedi 18 juin 1892. Paris. Cumont, F. 1913. Auguste Wagener. Liber Memorialis. Université de Gand I, 148-153. Ghent, Rectorat. De Seyn, E. 1935. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts de Belgique. Brussels, Ed. L’Avenir. Evers, C., 2002. Léon Somzée, l’ingénieur qui collectionnait. In A. Tsingarida, D. C. Kurtz (eds), Appropriating Antiquity, Saisir l’Antique, Le collections d’antiques en Belgique et en Grande Bretagne au XIXe siècle, 275-298. Brussels, Le Livre Timperman. Fröhner, W. 1888. Burlington Fine Arts Club: Catalogue of Objects of Greek Ceramic Art exhibited in 1888, printed for the Burlington Fine Arts Club. London. Leroy, M. 1968. Alphonse Willems. Biographie Nationale de Belgique suppl. 3, 738-739. Montens, V. 2008. Vers un musée des antiquités à Bruxelles ? Le musée du Cinquantenaire. In A. Tsingarida, A. Verbanck-Piérard (eds), L’Antiquité au service de la Modernité ? La réception de l’antiquité classique en Belgique au XIXe siècle, 281-306. Brussels, Le Livre Timperman. Piette, V. 2008.’L’antiquité se révéla à moi’. Charles Buls, un bruxellois libéral, pédagogue et amoureux du Beau. In A. Tsingarida, A. Verbanck-Piérard (eds), L’Antiquité au service de la Modernité ? La réception de l’antiquité classique en Belgique au XIXe siècle, 157-178. Brussels, Le Livre Timperman. Reinach, S. 1891. Courrier de l’art antique, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 2, 428-430. Sarti, S. 2008. The Campana collection in Belgium. In A. Tsingarida, A. Verbanck-Piérard (eds), L’Antiquité au service de la Modernité ? La réception de l’antiquité

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor classique en Belgique au XIXe siècle,179-194. Brussels, Le Livre Timperman. Sarti, S. 2012. The Campana collection at the Royal Museum of Art and History (Brussels). Bruxelles, CReA-Patrimoine. Smith, C. 1888. Review of a loan exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Greek Keramic Art (June 1888), Classical Review 1888, 189. Solvay, L. 1914-1940. Ernest-Isidore-Hubert Slingeneyer. Biographie Nationale de Belgique 22, 683-687. Tsingarida, A. 2002. ‘Nul ne sait qui n’essaye’. Alphonse van Branteghem et sa collection de vases grecs. In A. Tsingarida, D. C. Kurtz (eds.), Appropriating Antiquity, Saisir l’Antique, Les collections d’antiques en Belgique et en Grande Bretagne au XIXe siècle, 245-273. Brussels, Le Livre Timperman. Vanwelkenhuyzen, G. 1968. Charles Potvin. Biographie Nationale de Belgique suppl. 6, 663-670. Verhaeren, E. 1890 (1997). Les marbres du Parthénon. L’Art Moderne 14 décembre. In P. Aron (ed.), Emile Verhaeren. Ecrits sur l’art, 1881-1892, 393-394. Brussels, ed. Labor. Verhaeren, E. 1891 (1997). Au Cercle Artistique, La Nation 18 décembre. In P. Aron (ed.), Emile Verhaeren. Ecrits sur l’art, 1881-1892, 501-502. Brussels, Ed. Labor. Verhaeren, E. 1892. Collection van Branteghem, La Nation, 22 avril. Wagener, A. 1891. Note bibliographique. Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique 3e série XXII, 1-8.

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‘His Royal Highness the Prints of Wales’: George IV as a collector of prints1 Kate Heard Abstract Using documents in the Royal Archives and the collection of the Print Room at Windsor Castle, this paper assesses George IV as a collector of prints. It analyses George’s relationship with his suppliers, his use of the printed material he bought and the ways in which his purchases were administered within his household. Keywords George IV, Prince Regent, Colnaghi and Co., Prints, Carlton House, Printsellers

Although1vilified for his personal life and perpetual insolvency, George IV has long been recognised as a keen patron of the arts. This piece aims to complement existing analyses by offering an initial assessment of George’s print purchases, as Prince of Wales (1762-1811), Prince Regent (1811-20), and finally King (1820-30).2 It is intended as a preliminary survey of the evidence, preparatory to a wider study of George and his collection of graphic art. This particular paper focuses on the means by which George acquired his prints, the role his dealers, especially Colnaghi and Co., played in the formation of his collection and offers an initial assessment of the mechanisms by which suppliers of printed material were paid. It will also touch on George’s acquisition of contemporary watercolours and drawings, many of which were bought at the same time, and from the same sources, as his prints. This paper is based on a study of extant bills relating to graphic art purchases in the Royal Archives and the holdings of the Print Room at Windsor. As it is hoped will be shown, the evidence offers scope for a much more detailed study of George’s collecting interests in this field. George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, was born in 1762, the first son of the reigning monarch George III and his wife Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Evans 1998; Hibbert 1976; Parissien 2001). The enthusiasm that he showed for acquiring art, and specifically works on paper, may be attributed as much to inheritance as financial ability, as both his father and grandfather were important collectors: Frederick, Prince of Wales was a noted print connoisseur, while George III acquired a vast body of I am delighted to be able to take this opportunity to express my thanks to Arthur MacGregor for his kindness and encouragement in the fields of both medieval art and the history of collections. I am enormously grateful for his continued support 2 I am grateful for the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to quote from George IV’s papers in the Royal Archives. For help during the preparation of this piece, I would like to thank Pamela Clark and her colleagues in the Royal Archives, Alan Donnithorne, Roderick Lane, Emma Stuart, Diane and Guy Heard, and Lucy Donkin. I am particularly grateful to the Hon. Lady Roberts, Antony Griffiths, Martin Clayton and Jill Kelsey for their helpful comments on this paper. ‘RA’ denotes documents in the Royal Archives; ‘RCIN’ refers to Royal Collection Inventory Numbers. 1

Italian works on paper which remains important today, as well as a large collection of military and topographical works and thousands of prints and drawings (Blunt 1971; Haswell Millar and Dawnay 1971; McGeary 2002; Roberts 2004). George’s mother, too, displayed an interest in graphic art; her collecting of prints is shown in a number of extra-illustrated books preserved in the Royal Library, and in the catalogue of the posthumous sale of her library in 1819, which includes 556 lots of single impressions, drawings and bound volumes of prints (Christie 1819; Roberts 2004). George’s siblings also showed an interest in collecting works on paper. Prince Ernest wrote to him from Göttingen in January 1789 to complain of their brother: ‘Augustus has a taste for stones & prints, the latter of which I have no objection to but however think there are more amusing ways of spending my money’(Aspinall 1963, i, no.385). Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge, was also a keen collector of prints; after his death his collection passed intact to his son George and was sold on the latter’s death in 1904 (Lugt 1921, no.118).3 George’s sister, Princess Elizabeth, amassed an enormous collection of graphic art. Some of this remains together in Greiz while the library and bound volumes of prints were sold by Sotheby and Wilkinson in 1863 (Mattausch-Schirmbeck and Brandler, [1995]; Sotheby and Wilkinson 1863). Princess Augusta, while not recorded as a connoisseur of prints, was a keen collector of coins (Fraser 2005, 65). Among the bills for George’s purchases from Rudolph Ackermann in the Royal Archives are references to an account held by his daughter Charlotte to which £1.19.3 was charged in December 1808 ‘By order of Her R Hg’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27624). George’s own penchant for accumulation, in this case of documentary evidence, is expressed in a letter to his father of 1 August 1793, with which he encloses a letter from Charles Gregan Craufurd describing recent military action. In a postscript, George urges his father ‘when you have kept Captn. Craufurd’s letter as long as you 3

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I am grateful to Antony Griffiths for this reference.

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor would chuse, to order it to be return’d as I have carefully preserv’d the accounts of every action he has been in & seen since he went to the continent’ (Aspinall 1963 ii, no. 766). This tenacity for accumulation can also be seen in the Prince Regent’s pursuit of prints and drawings which was protracted and the subject of immense expenditure right up to his death. In October 1784, one year after he had been given his own residence of Carlton House, and when he was just 22 years old, his Treasurer, Colonel Hotham, wrote in horror of the Prince’s financial situation, telling him that he was ‘totally in the hands, and at the mercy of your builder, your upholsterer, your jeweller and your tailor’ (Aspinall 1963, 1, no. 128). The evidence for George’s collecting of works on paper preserved in the Royal Archives runs for nearly 50 years, from the Prince’s first documented print purchase in 1783, up to his death in 1830. It is complemented by the works on paper acquired by the Prince which remain in the Royal Collection and a large number of George’s satirical prints which are preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington, to which they were sold in the early 20th century (Godfrey 1984, 8). As will be shown below, these records do not provide a full picture of George’s acquisitions in this field, but, nonetheless, form an immensely valuable record of the Prince’s activities, particularly with regard to the London dealers Colnaghi & Co., who supplied him between 1792 and his death (Farr 2004; Manning 1960). It shows that George, like other members of his family, acquired works on paper for a number of purposes, and graphic art was used both to build a collection of prints and drawings worthy of a high-ranking gentleman’s library and to furnish and decorate the Prince’s residences. Although the demolition of Carlton House means that little evidence for the decorative use of prints survives, Sir James Bland Burges, who visited the Prince in 1794, recalled seeing prints of contemporary politicians hanging in a room on the top floor of the Prince’s residence (de Bellaigue 1991, 28). George did not just buy prints for his own use: he frequently made presents of such material to friends and family. In June 1802, the Prince sent Queen Charlotte a printed portrait of himself, which he described as a ‘fine print, most generally esteemed by those who [had] seen it’ and which he intended for her ‘private boudoir’ at Frogmore (Aspinall 1963, iv, no. 1648). This may have been an impression of the portrait of George as Grand Master of the Freemasons by Edward Scott, published on 4 June (RCIN 605204). On 5 February 1829, some years after his accession, a print after the King’s portrait by Lawrence was framed, glazed and sent ‘by command of His Majesty’ to Paris by one A. J. Barnard, who charged £25.4.0 for the print, framing and glazing and all expenses incurred in its transport (RA GEO/MAIN/28381). The print was obviously a gift, but it is not recorded to whom it was sent. Suppliers and sources George’s first bill for print purchases is not from Colnaghi (who only moved to London in May 1785), but from James

Bretherton, the publisher, printmaker and print dealer who traded from New Bond Street until at least 1799 (RA GEO/ MAIN/27679-80; Clayton 2004a). It was issued in 1785, but relates to purchases made back to 7 December 1783, the year in which the Prince acquired his London home, Carlton House. The start of his print collecting activity must, therefore, be regarded as part of the renovation and furnishing of this residence (de Bellaigue 1991). Bretherton appears to have been acting as a dealer as well as a printmaker/publisher in this instance. The bill shows he sold the Prince works from his own back catalogue, such as A Modern Spread Eagle, published in January 1782, and a print of a dancing bear, published in April 1774 (Stephens and George 1870, no. 6140; British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings J,6.5). Alongside these, the Prince purchased prints issued by other publishers such as Grown Gentlemen taught to Dance and A Rescue, or the Tars Triumphant, both published by Robert Sayer between 1767 and 1768, and Herod and Pilate, probably the satire on Charles James Fox, and Frederick North, second Earl of Guildford, published by Hannah Humphrey in 1783 (British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, 1878,0713.1307 and 1878,0713.1309; Stephens and George 1870, no. 6194). The prints itemised in this first bill are a mix of subjects, from satire to literary images (including two illustrations from The Young Werter), portraiture (including Mrs Abington and Mr Garrick) and allegory (including Attention, Simplicity and The Careful Shepherdess). The interest he displayed in satire, theatrical subjects and portraiture of contemporary figures, shows the Prince had already formed those tastes which would be evident in his print purchases throughout his life. In a number of cases, George appears to have bought impressions of prints which we would expect him to own as complementary copies. He purchased a mezzotint by Charles Turner, after John Hoppner’s portrait of Admiral Lord Nelson, which was in his own collection on 29 January 1806 (Evans 1998, 98). In 1811, he purchased a print of ‘The Grand Staircase at Carlton House’ for 5 shillings, but, like the Turner Nelson print, must have given permission for this to be made and it would be expected that he had received a complimentary copy (RA GEO/MAIN/27633). At times, he can be seen exercising control over the reproduction of his collection: a letter from Paul Colnaghi in the Royal Archives shows the dealer and publisher agreeing to discontinue advertisement of a forthcoming publication of the works of Sir Thomas Lawrence at the Prince’s express request (RA GEO/MAIN/26587). Although, frustratingly, no explicit instructions from George to his dealers have so far been located, a great deal about their role can be inferred from the bills. Prints were delivered by suppliers, most usually to Carlton House, where, if Henry Thielke’s experience of 1811 was typical, they were ‘delivered in the Hall to the Porter’ (RA GEO/ MAIN/27625). Similarly, William Austin issued a bill stating that prints had been delivered to Carlton House in 1784, 1785 and 1786, and John Bell noted that he had delivered prints to the same residence in 1806 (RA 114

Kate Heard: ‘His Royal Highness the Prints of Wales’: George IV as a collector of prints GEO/MAIN/27682; RA GEO/MAIN/27685; RA GEO/ MAIN/27289). Like many objects purchased by the Prince, material was not sent solely to Carlton House, however, and the location of George himself seems to have been a factor in determining the place of delivery. In September 1804, Edmund Scott, a Brighton painter, was called upon to supply the Prince with printed material which seems to have been of his own publication (RA GEO/MAIN/27244). In the same month John Bell, a London dealer, delivered a number of works, including four volumes of ‘Peronville’s Museum Royal’ (Le Musée français, by S. C. Croze-Magnan and E. Q. Viconti, published by Robillard-Peronville and Laurent in Paris between 1803 and 1809) to the Prince at Brighton (RA GEO/MAIN/27723).4 Although these were printed books rather than volumes of prints, they can be seen as part of the Prince’s wider interest in assembling a collection and demonstrate his interest in the collections of works of art formed by other European rulers: this particular series documented the collection of antiquities made at Paris by Napoleon. Importantly for a consideration of the Prince’s use of his collection is a second bill from John Bell, dated 7 January 1805, for another four volumes of this publication ‘in Continuation of those sent to Brighton’ and delivered to Carlton House, suggesting that these were being ordered for the Prince to read rather than simply to furnish his library (RA GEO/MAIN/27289). Sometimes material was sent after the Prince: items delivered in July 1790 by V. M. Picot were recorded as having been ‘Sent to Brighton last Summer by R. Rookby’; this note was undoubtedly made when the outstanding bill came to be settled (RA GEO/ MAIN/27683). John Bell, William Austin and Edmund Scott, along with a number of other dealers, were occasional and irregular suppliers of prints, and it seems likely that they were approached to provide specific material, normally, as in the case of Edmund Scott, that published by themselves. Other suppliers provided a wider variety of material, and issued their bills to George on a regular basis, suggesting that he held standing agreements for supply with a number of London dealers. Among those issuing regular bills was Hannah Humphrey, who published the satires of James Gillray, of which George amassed a huge collection (Clayton 2004b; Godfrey 1984). She submitted annual accounts for payment, itemising all prints purchased in the previous year (for example RA GEO/MAIN/27312). On 4 July 1803, she charged £1.1.0 ‘for the Loan of a Folio of Prints’, which it seems likely were sent for approval or return (RA GEO/MAIN/27722). Edward Orme, a London publisher and printseller who proudly styled himself on his headed paper ‘Printseller & Publisher to His Majesty / and His Royal Highness the Prince Regent’, issued quarterly bills; he specialised in prints of military and sporting subjects and also published topical topographical views, all areas which interested George. In 1820, Orme’s service to George was recognised with his appointment The copy of this work in the Royal Collection (RCIN 1193523-6) may have belonged to George. 4

as editor of prints in ordinary to the new king (he had been appointed printseller to George III in 1799, so this represented a continuation of the royal warrant) (Maggs 2004). Orme was also a supplier of ‘transparencies’, or prints hand-coloured with oil paints, which he described in a Times advertisement of 1801 as being ‘fitted up for the windows and window blinds, to imitate the painted glass’ (The Times, 1 September 1801, 1; Griffiths 1980, 149). The Prince was, for a while, an eager collector of this new type of material, purchasing a number of examples from Orme, as well as his newly-published ‘Essay on Transparency’ on 27 February 1807 (RA GEO/MAIN/27354). In 1814, it was recorded that twelve allegorical transparencies had been used to decorate a room at Carlton House (de Bellaigue 1991, 31). Orme was not the only supplier of transparencies: Benjamin Jutsham noted in January 1815 that ‘Mr Pugin’ had supplied ’13 Transparencies’ ‘which were used in the Garden Rooms on the Night of the Fete’ (RCIN 112484, p. 178). Analogous with these inferred standing orders is the set of serial publications to which George subscribed. The volumes of Peronville’s Royal Museum delivered by John Bell to Brighton and Carlton House have already been mentioned, but George received numerous serials. Some of these, such as William Alexander’s Chinese Costume and the Gallery of Fashion, both purchased via Colnaghi and Co., reflected his aesthetic interests (for example, RA GEO/MAIN/27117). Others, notably the print series Wild Sports and British Sports, both supplied by their publisher Edward Orme, indulged his interest in hunting and games (for example, RA GEO/MAIN/27354). George subscribed to the Encyclopedia, the British Gallery of Portraits and Boydell’s celebrated Shakespeare Gallery, receiving the edition of the latter ‘with Text[,] Large & Smal Plates’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27272 (Encyclopedia); RA GEO/MAIN/27843 (British Gallery of Portraits); RA GEO/MAIN/27713 (Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery)). He showed some tenacity in obtaining full runs of serials, one bill of 15 March 1813 from Colnaghi and Co. noting the exchange of ‘18 Nos for a Complete Sett of Portraits of Remarkable Persons in the French Revolution’ (Tableaux historiques de la Révolution Française) (RA GEO/ MAIN/27923; Hould 2002). If the account of George Cruikshank contained in Percy Cruikshank’s memoir is to be believed, the printmaker seems to have provided proofs of his satires gratis, and probably without the Prince’s explicit request. The method of delivery certainly seems to suggest an amount of provocative mischief-making on the part of the artist, as well as a justified fear of the Prince’s wrath: The plate being finished, a proof, in the shape of a roll of paper, was taken by a trusty agent, to Carlton House, at night. There a pair of sentries marched, in front of the Royal residence, and when their walk was back to back, the agent stepping up, unperceived, dropped the roll of paper over the open screen, in front of the House. This, in course of time, being found by [a] Royal porter, was 115

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor opened, and after being enjoyed in the kitchen, was laid on the Royal breakfast table, and a very indigestible roll it must have proved (Patten 1992, i, 75). Despite their unpalatable subject matter and unconventional method of delivery, George appears to have retained Cruikshank’s satirical prints, over five hundred of which are preserved at the Library of Congress. As he did when purchasing other works of art, when George wished to acquire works on paper at foreign sales, he appears to have used agents based in the relevant country (Queen’s Gallery 1966, 3-4.). In 1815, a J. Pulman submitted a bill for a sum of money ‘Paid at Madrid for His Royal Highness The Prince Regent’ for ‘A Collection of Prints containing Portraits of the Royal Family, of several of the Grandees & Ministers and the Guerilla Chiefs, Views of the Monastery of Escurial & of Aranjuez’ which had been ‘delivered to Mr Troup in August 1815’ (RA GEO/ MAIN/28082). This is a rare example of foreign purchases preserved in George’s mainly domestic bills for print purchases. That there were many more of these is shown in Benjamin Jutsham’s books of receipts, which records numerous deliveries of prints from abroad, including a box of prints ‘sent from Paris by way of Dover’ and ‘A Small Parcel, Containing a Print of a German Prince’ sent from the London Docks, where it had presumably arrived by ship (RCIN, 1112775, pp. 92 and 175). Although George purchased graphic material from a number of publishers and dealers, by far his most important supplier was Paul Colnaghi, the Italian print dealer who had moved from Paris to London (Farr 2004; Manning 1960). Colnaghi initially worked with Anthony Torré, in the latter’s Paris shop at the Palais Royal, before moving to London, where he took over Torré’s share of the company in 1788. He entered into brief partnerships with a number of other dealers, among them Antony Molteno, before trading as Colnaghi and Co. from 1800. Colnaghi traded in prints and drawings, and also acted as a publisher, issuing prints by Francesco Bartolozzi and after the portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence. He rapidly established himself as the first port of call for the most influential collectors of his day, and those who aspired to be like them, holding regular viewings at which the highest ranks of society could be seen. As well as the Prince Regent, Colnaghi supplied the duc d’Orléans, who was a formative influence on the young Prince’s tastes (de Bellaigue 1991; Evans 1998, 701; Farr 2004; Queen’s Gallery 1966). The earliest surviving bill from Colnaghi to the Prince is dated 3 February 1792, when the firm was trading as Molteno, Colnaghi and Co. (RA GEO/MAIN/26800). It is a relatively small order, and very typical of the Prince’s purchases from the firm: £6.4.0 for a print after Gainsborough of a portrait of the Prince, an unidentified print described as ‘Harmony and Nymph sacrificing’ and two prints showing the colours of the Swiss Army. Thereafter, George was a regular client of the firm, which usually submitted a weekly bill for amounts ranging up to

about £50. It is unclear how the prints supplied to George each week were chosen since Colnaghi’s archives do not preserve any instructions from this period, but it seems likely that they had a standing order to send a selection of the highest quality prints they had acquired, plus new publications, for consideration. Returns are occasionally listed, but are unusual, and normally represent duplicates or replacement with superior copies, such as the instance in November 1816, when Colnaghi charged for ‘Exchanging a Set of the Prints of Coronation of Bonaparte for another Copy, with Letter press’ and ‘Binding ditto Elegantly in blue Morocco, gilt leaves and lined with green silk’ (RA GEO/MAIN/28135). Notably, this bill is annotated, ‘By the express order of His Royal Highness’. Some material supplied is particularly tailored to George’s interests, and may represent special requests on the part of the Prince: Robert Dighton is known to have made drawings of military uniforms to order (Evans 1998, 94; Haswell Miller and Dawnay 1970, 87-92). Other instances of material particularly appealing to the Prince may show a canny dealer trading to his client’s known weaknesses. Certainly, some bills must represent more than a fulfilment of a standing order, such as that of 29 November 1810, when the grieving Prince purchased numerous printed portraits of his sister Amelia, who had died 27 days earlier, and to whom he had been devoted (RA GEO MAIN/27581; Fraser 2005, 246). Among these were Ackermann’s prints of two putti weeping at Amelia’s tomb, with a copy of Anne Mee’s painting of the Princess, which had been published on 6 November. The Prince bought two copies of this, both for 10s 6d: these probably relate to the two surviving versions of this in the Royal Collection, one of which is a proof, the other of which is coloured (RCIN 605061 and 605062). Colnaghi and Co. acted as more than print suppliers to George, offering a range of services and materials according to his needs. As well as dealing in prints, they acted as the Prince’s representative at auction, securing 133 printed portraits from Sir William Musgrave’s collection at his sale in March 1800 (Griffiths 1992). That this was at the Prince’s behest rather than a speculative purchase is recorded in the annotation that the works were ‘Bought by His Royl Highs Order at Sir Willm Musgrave’s Sale’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27144). Colnaghi performed the same function in 1809 at General Dowdeswell’s sale and at the sale of the estate of Paul Sandby, in May 1811, submitting a bill for ‘Lots bought at Mr Sandby’s Sale’, which detailed amount paid, commission and interest charged (RA GEO/ MAIN/27800; RA GEO/MAIN/27634). Unlike other dealers, Colnaghi and Co. also provided George with what may be termed ‘curatorial’ services, most notably in the spring of 1813, when they began to charge the Prince weekly for ‘attendance for the arrangt of His Royl Highness Collection of Drawings and Prints’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27839 onwards). The Prince’s graphic art collection was now a few months short of twenty years old, and it appears that a certain amount of disarray had developed, as Colnaghi spent April to June of 1813 116

Kate Heard: ‘His Royal Highness the Prints of Wales’: George IV as a collector of prints sorting out the collection. It seems likely that they were working with the loose material housed in the Library at Carlton House: in 1818, Benjamin Jutsham was to record receipt of a ‘Very handsome Red Morocco Case in the shape of a Book, 18/2 Inches by 13/2 Inches Gilt with ornaments and Mounted with Embossed Metal Gilt Clasps’ containing 36 prints, which he recorded had been placed in the Library, and it would be expected that the prints purchased as ‘library’ rather than ‘decorative’ works were housed in this room (RCIN 1112775, p.30). The bills from Colnaghi did not describe the form the ‘arrangement’ took, but it seems that they were sorting and classifying the material purchased by the Prince, an activity regularly undertaken by dealers at this time.5 Certainly, in the course of their work, they started to identify duplicates, and for a while their bills feature returns of unwanted material, including numbers of the British Gallery of Portraits and ‘Four Views of Paris’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27843; RA GEO/ MAIN/27850). In May 1813, they provided the Prince with two catalogues of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, probably that published in two volumes by E. Malone in 1797 (RA GEO/MAIN/27846). Considering the large number of prints after Reynolds purchased by the Prince in the previous 20 years, and the ‘arrangement’ currently taking place, it is conceivable that this was intended to complement one section of the print collection. On at least one occasion, Colnaghi also undertook, or arranged for, restoration work on the collection, submitting a bill for the cleaning of eight prints in October 1810 (RA GEO/ MAIN/27571). The unframed prints and drawings owned by the Prince had certainly been subject to some form of curatorial care earlier than 1813, however, as Colnaghi’s bills regularly include references to his purchase of materials for storing the collection. In April 1800, George was charged £1.16.0 for ‘A Portfolio 1/2 Bound with 60 Leaves Blue paper’ and in November 1802, Colnaghi provided four quires of ‘fine blue paper’, undoubtedly also for mounting (RA GEO/MAIN/27145-6; RA GEO/MAIN/27205). Another, much more expensive, portfolio, with ‘Stout Dutch paper’ cost £7.7.0 was purchased on 16 January 1804 (RA GEO/ MAIN/27245). In 1809, Colnaghi sold the Prince ‘Two Cases to contain Prints - 1/2 bound Russia back & corners’, suggesting that works were both being mounted in albums, and kept loose in boxes (RA GEO/MAIN/27483). The latter method of storage was certainly in use by 1810, when Colnaghi’s sold the Prince ‘Two Solanders 1/2 bound Russia back corners, to contain prints’ for £3.12.6 (RA GEO/MAIN/27539). Some storage materials seem to have been provided with certain works in mind, such as that supplied by Colnaghi in 1813, described as ‘a Portfolio with 20 leaves bound in Russia letterd Old English Military Exercise’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27843). In the case of the map collection, Colnaghi and Co. arranged for the mounting of a number of works on linen and the provision of calf cases for housing in 1813 (RA GEO/MAIN/28548). Other dealers occasionally supplied storage materials, such as 5

I am grateful to Antony Griffiths for this information.

the imperial portfolio provided by J. J. Hinxman in 1819 or the portfolio included in Ackermann’s bill for December 1808, but in these cases it appears that the portfolios were intended to house the works sold by these businesses in the same transaction – in Ackermann’s case the 45 military drawings which he had arranged to be mounted, in Hinxman’s case the set of proof prints of the Prince’s recently deceased daughter, Princess Charlotte (RA GEO/ MAIN/28251; RA GEO/MAIN/27624). Not all print purchases were stored in portfolios or solander boxes and, on a number of occasions, Colnaghi supplied frames for specific works, which were intended for hanging rather than as part of the library collection. In August 1802, they provided ‘A Proof of the Port of His Royl Highs’ for £1.11.6 and ‘A Gilt frame & Glass to ditto’ for £1.4.0 (RA GEO/MAIN/27202). In 1808, they supplied a box, probably a packing case for transport, for ‘four prints of Race Horses framed and glazed’(RA GEO/MAIN/27462). In January 1806, Ackermann supplied a proof of a print of ‘Nelson’s Monument’, along with ‘an Elegant Frame [with] Glass’ for the same (RA GEO/MAIN/27624). Frames were undoubtedly provided for works which were to be given as gifts, including that sent to Paris discussed above, and this would also explain the high proportion of portraits of George himself that were provided with frames since such subject matter made a suitable gift to family, friends and servants. At the same time, evidence that framed prints were hung in George’s residences exists in a list of receipts and deliveries made by Benjamin Jutsham (RCIN 1112484 and 1112775). These include references to a framed and glazed print ‘representing the Interview of Charles The First with his Children in the presence of Oliver Cromwell by William Sharp’ which, it was noted, was ‘Hung up in Miss Wartons Room’ in 1822 (RCIN 1112775, p. 156). Elizabeth Wharton had been the Prince Regent’s housekeeper at Carlton House since 1817. On a number of occasions, Colnaghi’s bills reveal their involvement in specific projects for the use of the print collection. In January 1800, the Prince’s normal weekly purchase was replaced by a frenetic month of activity, with large numbers of purchases being made almost every day. Prints and bills flew in great quantities from Colnaghi’s headquarters to Carlton House and by the end of the month they had stopped itemising individual works, merely sending ‘parcels’ and ‘large assortments’ on a sale or return basis. On January 22, a bill records one such parcel being sent in the morning and another in the evening. It was in the midst of this frantic activity that a beleaguered clerk at the dealers made a memorably apt slip in his heading of a bill, which was addressed to ‘His Royl Highs The Prints of Wales’(RA GEO/MAIN/27129). Although the reason for this increase in activity is not made explicit in the bills, it seems likely that the Prince was creating a Print Room (Evans 1998, 98). Among the prints provided by Colnaghi at this time are the purely decorative elements of such a scheme, including, on January 18 ‘A Very larg assortiment of Medalions Borders & Small prints in Colours’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27125). A similar Print Room, elements of which were certainly in 117

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor place by 1786, is found in the Queen’s Cottage at Kew, and George’s mother and sisters decorated rooms at Frogmore in the same way (Groom and Prosser 2006, 76-8; Roberts 1997, 219). The Prince would also have known the Print Room at Uppark, where he had stayed in 1796, and which had had a Print Room since the mid-1770s (Rowell and Robinson 1996, 130-1). His own Print Room, it appears, differs from either in its use of coloured prints, which would have undoubtedly created a striking effect appropriate for the interiors of Carlton House. The bills supplied by Colnaghi also demonstrate that the Prince was interested in extra-illustration, at the time a popular pastime and one which, as it has been seen, was indulged in by his mother, Queen Charlotte, and was also undertaken by his sisters. The archives hold records of purchases ‘for the illustration of Grammont’, ‘for the illustration of Clarendon’ and ‘for the illustration of The Stage’, showing that the Prince grangerized Memoires du Comte de Grammont, the Earl of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and an unidentified volume with a theatrical subject (for example RA GEO/MAIN/2757; RA GEO/ MAIN/27751; RA GEO/MAIN/28336). The first two were popular objects for extra-illustration, and it appears to have been possible to buy these ready-illustrated as well as for what might be termed ‘self-illustration’ (Peltz 2005). The Prince appears to have undertaken the extraillustration himself, or with the help of his staff, since the Colnaghi bills include a reference to the commissioning of ‘a Frontispiece to the Memoirs of Chevr de Grammont illustrated by His Royal Highness’ from one ‘Mr Tomkins’, probably Peltro William Tomkins (1759-1840), who had given drawing lessons to George III and engraving lessons to the Princesses and was closely involved in engraving Princess Elizabeth’s drawings for her publications (Clayton and McConnell 2004; Fraser 2005, 168-9). The Prince also appears to have purchased items ready-illustrated, among them a ‘Poem of Richmond Hill illustrated with Drawings & Prints of Views and Portraits - elegantly bound in blue morocco & gilt leaves’ purchased from Colnaghi for £31.10.0 on 15 March 1814 (RA GEO/MAIN/27986). Methods of payment With occasional exceptions – most notably that of January 1800 – George’s expenditure on graphic art remained steady, if not restrained. He usually spent around £10 to £50 a week with Colnaghi and Co. This level of spending was punctuated by the odd hiccup, such as that of 14 September 1812, in which the Prince spent £99.13.6, half of which went on ‘Eight drawings of the Russian, French and Austrian Army by Fisher’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27884 - as usual, drawings were the most expensive individual items on the bill, but prints were bought in greater quantity).6 He may have been emboldened by his frugality the previous 6

Probably the eight drawings signed and dated 1812 by Johann Georg Paul Fischer which remain in the Royal Collection (RCIN 916450-2, 916460, 916464 and 916466-8). These include drawings of Spanish and Portuguese troops as well as those nationalities noted in the bill (Haswell Miller and Dawnay 1970, pp.128-133).

week, in which only £3.17.0 was spent, but failed to restrain himself further, and September proved an expensive month, with £157.14.0 being spent at Colnaghi alone (RA GEO/ MAIN/27877). As Jane Roberts has suggested, the Prince spent more on prints than on drawings and watercolours, but the latter were usually the most expensive items in bills, individual pieces being purchased for more than all but the rarest prints (Evans 1998, 71-72). Payment was usually made from the Privy Purse or the Treasurer’s Account, although in April 1803 Anthony di Poggi, who had demanded an urgent settlement of his accounts as he was moving abroad, was paid ‘from His Ro Ho’s Trust Accot’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27711). In 1812, an ‘Abstract of Mr Colnaghi’s Bills for Prints &c’ was drawn up, listing the amounts spent per quarter and the dates of payment (RA GEO/MAIN/27005). It shows that between 1799 and 1805, Colnaghi could expect to wait around two years after the submission of an account for its settlement. From the second quarter of 1805, through to the third quarter of 1809, Colnaghi was ‘paid by Instalments’, which undoubtedly represented an attempt to settle outstanding debts through a predictably regular expenditure, rather than to react to the Prince’s erratic spending habits (quarterly totals at this time range from £78.9.0 in October 1805 to £924.16.0 in April 1809). Colnaghi was not the only dealer to be paid in this way at this time: Walsh Porter, who acquired works of art for the Prince and advised on interior decoration, was also paid in quarterly instalments from 1805 (de Bellaigue 1991, 12). The final bill of 1809, for £128.18.6, was settled relatively quickly, suggesting the system of instalments had worked. From the beginning of 1810 through to the middle of 1812, though, things were once again out of hand and it was noted that a total sum of £3797.13.3 had been ‘paid by the Commissioners’, who had been charged with settling royal affairs in the light of George III’s illness (RA GEO/MAIN/27005). In the period 1799-1812, the Prince spent £13,616.14.6 with Colnaghi alone (RA GEO/MAIN/27004). Although the Prince’s spending on graphic art was wild and could be unrestrained, the bills show that there were clear attempts by a group within his household to control the administration of this section of the Prince’s spending. From April 1800, George Troup, who appears to have worked in the Prince’s Wardrobe, begins to sign or initial bills to show that he had checked and approved them, often adding the words ‘examined and right’. Troup did not sign every bill: those by Colnaghi were rarely checked unless they represented an unusual expenditure. Benjamin Jutsham, George’s Inventory Clerk at Carlton House, and James Stanier Clarke, George’s Librarian, also initialled bills to indicate that they had been checked. It seems that bills were checked against deliveries of prints and the totals of bills checked on arrival at Carlton House. On at least one occasion the total of a bill was corrected in red ink (RA GEO/MAIN/27493). Bills were then sent to Robert Gray in the Duchy of Cornwall Offices for payment. He annotated and initialled the back to show that they had been paid. 118

Kate Heard: ‘His Royal Highness the Prints of Wales’: George IV as a collector of prints George Troup also appears to have kept a separate running total of the Prince’s expenditure on prints and drawings, which he shared with Gray each quarter. In 1812, Gray noted that his total ‘Agrees with Mr Troup’s Accots as compared’, and in 1814 similarly confirmed that his total ‘corresponds with the Duplicate acct kept by Mr Troup, as sent to me for comparing’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27836A; RA GEO/MAIN/28008). These notes occur every quarter and suggest that, between them, Troup and Gray were keeping a keen eye on the Prince’s interests. At the other end of the chain, Benjamin Jutsham was keeping a careful record of all deliveries to Carlton House, noting where consignments had come from, and where they had been sent. Occasionally tension between those trying to keep control of the Prince’s debts can be felt. Jutsham wrote in May 1821 that he was noting a print late because ‘it had been some months in the Wardrobe’ (RCIN 1112775, p. 135). A bill of 5 March 1814, from Colnaghi, is annotated by Gray with palpable frustration: ‘This account transmitted, for the first time, by Mr Jutsham, 10 Decr 1821’ (RA GEO/MAIN/27987). Despite the care taken by his officers, however, George remained an unfettered buyer of prints, continually in debt to numerous suppliers. His taste for graphic art did not wane after his accession in 1820 and Colnaghi and others continued to supply him up to his death in 1830. There is a strange and fitting coda to the story in the final bill submitted by Colnaghi against George’s account, sent to his executors on 8 July 1830 (RA GEO/MAIN/28393). This was for the posthumous supply of prints ‘for reference at the Funeral of His late Majesty’, and included depictions of the funeral processions of the Duke of York and the Princess Charlotte, obviously used to plan the King’s own obsequies. As the bill noted plaintively, these prints, despite being of temporary use for a very specific purpose ‘were not returned’. Fittingly, George, who had lived surrounded by prints, was buried by them too, his funeral rites reduced to one of the historical spectacles he had so eagerly collected in life. True to form, Colnaghi and Co. was not to be paid for this final service for another three years.

Bibliography RA GEO/MAIN. Royal Archives, Papers of George IV RCIN 112484. Benjamin Jutsham, Deliveries and Receipts RCIN 1112775. Benjamin Jutsham, Receipts 1816-29 Aspinall, A. 1963. The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales 1770-1812, 8 volumes. London, Cassell Blunt, A. 1971. The History of the Royal Collection of Drawings, in E. Schilling (ed.), The German Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen at Windsor Castle. London, Routledge. Christie 1819. A Catalogue of the Genuine Library, Prints, and Books of Prints, of an Illustrious Personage, lately deceased [Queen Charlotte]. London, Christie’s. Clayton, T. 2004a. James Bretherton, Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography¸7, 482-3.

Clayton, T. 2004b, Hannah Humphrey, Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography¸ 28, 801. Clayton, T. and McConnell, A. 2004. Peltro William Tomkins, Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography, 54, 924-5. De Bellaigue, G. 1991. Carlton House. The Past Glories of George IV’s Palace. London, The Queen’s Gallery. Evans, M. ed. 1998. Princes as Patrons. The Art Collections of the Princes of Wales from the Renaissance to the Present Day. London, Merrell Holberton with the National Museums and Galleries of Wales and the Royal Collection. Farr, D. 2004. Colnaghi family, Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography, 12, 772-4. Fraser, F. 2005. Princesses. The Six Daughters of George III. London, John Murray Ltd. Godfrey, R. 1984. English Caricature. 1620 to the Present. London, Victoria and Albert Museum. Griffiths, A. 1980. Prints and Printmaking. An Introduction to the History and Techniques. London, British Museum Publications Limited. Griffiths, A. 1992. Sir William Musgrave’s Sale & British Biography, British Library Journal 18, 171-89. Groom, S. and Prosser, L. 2006. Kew Palace. The Official Illustrated History. London, Merrell Publishers. Haswell Miller, A. E., and Dawnay, N. P. 1970. Military Drawings and Paintings in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 2 volumes. London, Phaidon. Hibbert, C. 1976. George IV. Harmondsworth, Penguin. Hould, C. 2002. La Révolution par la Gravure. Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux. Lugt, F. 1921. Les Marques de Collections de Dessins et d’Estampes, Amsterdam, Vereenigde Drukkerijen. Maggs, J. 2004. Edward Orme, Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography 41, 938-9. Manning, E. 1960. Colnaghi’s 1760-1960. Privately printed. Mattausch-Schirmbeck, R. and Brandler, G. [1995]. Ich schreibe, lese und male ohne Unterlaß... Elizabeth, englische Prinzessin und Landsgräfin von HessenHomburg (1770-1840) als Künstlerin und Sammlerin, Bad Homburg, Greiz: Museum im Gotischen Haus; Staatliche Bücher- und Kupferstichsammlung. McGeary, T. 2002. Frederick, Prince of Wales, as Print Collector, Print Quarterly 19, 254-60 Parissien, S. 2001. George IV. The Grand Entertainment. London, John Murray. Patten, R. L. 1992. George Cruikshank’s Life, Times and Art, 2 volumes. London, Lutterworth Press. Peltz, L. 2005. Facing the text: the amateur and commercial histories of extra-illustration, c.1770-1840, in R. Myers, M. Harris and G. Mandelbrote (eds), Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading, 91-135. London, British Library. Queen’s Gallery 1966. George IV and the Arts of France. London, Queen’s Gallery. Roberts, J. 1997. Royal Landscape. The Gardens and Parks of Windsor. New Haven and London, Yale University Press.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Roberts, J. 2004. George III and Queen Charlotte. Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste. London, Royal Collection Publications. Rowell, C. and Robinson, J. M. 1996. Uppark Restored. London, National Trust Enterprises Ltd. Sotheby and Wilkinson 1863. Catalogue of the Valuable & Choice Library of HRH The Princess Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse Homburg. London, S. Leigh Sotheby and J. Wilkinson. Stephens, F. G. and George, M. D. 1870. Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum, 11 volumes. London, British Museum Press.

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Robert Pashley and the Pashley sarcophagus Lucilla Burn Abstract This article focuses on Robert Pashley, one of the nineteenth-century travellers and collectors responsible for the development of the antiquities collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. It discusses the unusual find-spot in southern Crete of the so-called ‘Pashley sarcophagus’ but is more concerned to offer a brief introduction to the scope and character of Pashley’s published journal, Travels in Crete. Keywords Pashley, Crete, Fitzwilliam Museum, Roman sarcophagi.

The history of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is a book still waiting to be written. The task requires diligence, enthusiasm, historical sympathy and imagination: it needs, in short, a Cambridge Arthur McGregor, a scholar with the rare combination of skills that would do proper justice to the aims and achievements of the early guardians of the collections. The Fitzwilliam was founded by the terms of the will of Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion (Figure 1), who died in 1816 leaving to the University of Cambridge his collection of paintings, drawings, prints, manuscripts and early printed books, along with what was in those days the substantial sum of £90,000 to build a museum in which to house them. The vicissitudes of the original building project are a story in their own right, but suffice it here to say that eventually, in 1848, the original building still known today as the Founder’s Building, opened to the public. This relatively early example of a purposebuilt, grandly neo-classical-style museum, provided five spacious galleries for paintings on the upper floor and, echoing the plan on the lower ground floor, five elegant ‘library rooms’ below. The photograph reproduced in Figure 2 is annotated with the date 1880 and shows the largest of the four lower ground floor galleries, occupied then as now by part of the Antiquities collection. The neoclassical splendour of the architecture might seem purposebuilt for the display of Classical Antiquities, but apparently this was not the original intention, rather something that happened gradually as donations of sculpture and other antiquities made their way into the Museum and needed somewhere to be displayed. By1880 the room was clearly quite remarkably cluttered with an assortment of Egyptian, Greek and Near Eastern Antiquities and also plaster casts of notable sculptures held elsewhere, including the Demeter of Knidos and the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the originals of which were – and still are – in the British Museum. Four years later, in 1884, the plaster casts were actually banished from the Museum, finding their own home in the nearby Museum of Classical Archaeology (Beard 1993).

to research and document as we redeveloped the main Antiquities gallery, a project embarrassingly modest by the standards of the Ashmolean’s rebuild, that we are embarking on in the summer of 2008. We also hoped, resources permitting, to investigate the influence of various museum staff. Among these was Charles Walston, who initiated the study of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge, and was Director of the Museum from 1883 to 1839. Still more influential was the alternately acerbic and sycophantic Sidney Cockerell, Director from 1908 to 1937, who famously claimed to have ‘found the museum a pig-sty and left it a palace’ (Blunt 1964, 135).

The history of the display of the Greek and Roman Antiquities is one aspect of the collections that we hoped

Another aspect of the Greek and Roman gallery project research project will focus on the growth of the collections

Figure 1. Joseph Wright of Derby. The Hon. Richard Fitzwilliam, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, 1764. Oil on canvas. Fitzwilliam Museum, PDP-1.

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Figure 2. The principal Antiquities gallery of the Fitzwilliam Museum in a photograph of 1880.

and the contributions made by individual collectors, their character, motives and modi operandi. Considerable work has already been carried out on many of these people, most notably by David Gill when he worked at the Fitzwilliam in the 1980s. But the various strands of available information could profitably be brought together and we would also like to devise methods of making the public more aware of them. As with most museums of comparable age, quite a few ‘characters’ are associated with the development of the Fitzwilliam’s collections. Most colourful by far was Edward Daniel Clarke, antiquary and mineralogist (for a good introduction see McConnell 2004, 863-5). Clarke came up to Cambridge in 1785 at the age of sixteen; his academic record was undistinguished but he gained some notoriety during his final year when he spent an entire term constructing an air balloon, which was launched to great local interest from the grounds of Jesus College. His family was not affluent and when he graduated in 1790 he found employment as a tutor, specialising in accompanying young gentlemen wealthier than himself on European tours, both southwards to view the classical sites and more unusually also northwards into Scandinavia and Russia, to study and collect plants and mineralogical specimens (and in Uppsala the balloon experiment was repeated). In 1800 Clarke toured Greece with his then pupil, John Marten Cripps; he formed a large collection of coins and some ancient vases, but his greatest achievement was the acquisition of the upper part of a Caryatid from Eleusis

(Fitzwilliam Museum GR.1.1865, Budde and Nicholls 1964, 46-8); although he obtained official permission from the Turkish government he removed the figure very much against the wishes of the local people, who regarded her as the goddess Demeter, and believed her presence ensured the fertility of their fields (Clarke 1909, 32-7). Clarke also identified her as Demeter; he thought she was of classical date and associated her with the hand of Pheidias (Clarke 1909, 12-37). The figure is now generally held to represent a priestess of Demeter and it is clear that it was one of a pair that originally formed part of the structure of the Inner Propylaea at Eleusis, a structure completed sometime in the 40s BC (for the Caryatid, Fitzwilliam Museum GR.1.1865, see Budde and Nicholls 1964, 469; for the Inner Propylaea at Eleusis, see Hörmann 1932). Clarke’s later career does not disappoint: he became the first Professor of Mineralogy at Cambridge in 1808 and pioneered several rather violent-sounding experiments that involved melting and fusing metals with blow-pipes. In his spare time he wrote up a 6-volume edition of his Travels and also dabbled in typography, inventing the first sans serif font and the Greek font still used for Oxford Classical texts today. Other significant Fitzwilliam collectors include John Disney in the nineteenth century, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon in the twentieth (for brief introductions to these see Budde and Nicholls 1964, xi-xvi). But the focus of this paper, is, rather, Robert Pashley, famous today in the Fitzwilliam for the Roman sarcophagus that 122

Lucilla Burn: Robert Pashley and the Pashley sarcophagus

Figure 3. A. Schranz, An evening in a peasant’s cottage. Wood engraving. Pashley 1937, I, 306. is known by his name but in most respects much less well known than Clarke. Pashley was born in York in 1805, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1825, becoming a Fellow of the College in 1830. In 1833 - 4 he toured Greece, Asia Minor and Crete, and in 1837 he published a two-volume account of his Travels in Crete (Pashley 1837). Returning to England he pursued an energetic and useful career as a lawyer, proceeding to the rank of QC and then assistant judge on the northern circuit before his premature death in 1859 at the age of just 54 (for a brief account of Pashley’s life see Garnett 2004, 965). His own collection of antiquities was destroyed in a fire at the Temple in London in 1838, but happily his old university had already received, through the kind offices of the then Admiral of the Mediterranean fleet, Sir Pulteney Malcolm, the extremely fine Roman sarcophagus that Pashley saw on his travels and of which he was the first to publish a detailed and highly erudite description. We shall come shortly to the sarcophagus itself, which is important and interesting in its own right; but the publication is Pashley’s true memorial, and offers many insights into his character and tastes. Few people today would venture to read the book from cover to cover; and it is certain that judicious (Arthur McGregor-like) editing and abbreviation would have improved it considerably. But it is sporadically remarkable for its flashes of enthusiasm, and the author’s limitations as an archaeologist are more than compensated by his enthusiasm, energy and passion. No reader could fail to admire and indeed marvel at Pashley’s stamina: in the four months of his stay there can be few inches of Crete that he did not visit, as is shown

by the highly detailed, fold-out map included at the back of Volume II. To say that the terrain was inhospitable is an understatement; often the party had to send their mules by a longer route and proceed on foot as the animals could not manage the paths chosen by the guide. Pashley was unfortunate in that the greater part of his Cretan journeys took place in Lent: not only was the weather largely atrocious but in the majority of the houses or small monasteries where he was entertained, the staple evening meal was a dish of ‘herbs’ occasionally enlivened with eggs. On the rare occasions when meat was available it arrived ‘swimming in oil’ (Pashley 1837, I.60) or else turned out to be a ‘preparation of camel’s flesh, pastruma, of which’ (says Pashley) ‘I cannot speak very highly’ (Pashley 1837, I.96). Wine was in similarly short supply, and in other respects too the accommodation was primitive; the party generally slept on the ground wrapped in their cloaks, with their mule saddles for pillows: other ‘discomforts of the couch’ (Pashley 1837, I.270) – meaning fleas and lice – are also mentioned with disconcerting frequency. Not surprisingly both Pashley and Signor Antonio Schranz, the Spanish artist whose fine engravings illustrate the journey, fell ill from time to time. Signor Schranz is on one occasion left behind in the comparative civilisation offered by the city of Rethymnon, but Pashley himself is made of sterner stuff: he never gives up, but instead arises from a night of sickness to re-mount his mule and struggle on up another precipitous path, through another ravine, in the search of yet more ruins. No inconvenience or discomfort is too great for him and his sang-froid never falters: ‘our situation was by no means enviable’ he declares (Pashley 1837, I.238), with admirable sang froid when he and his 123

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor guides lose their way more than a mile into the underground caverns and grottoes of Sarkho: while the locals panic, Pashley suggests a rational plan that eventually results in their escape. Every evening he seems to have written up his journal: Figure 3 shows him hard at work, opposite his pipe-smoking host. Equal stamina informs his enthusiasm for his subject. No coin is too worn to be purchased and described, no inscription too trivial for transcription, the etymology of every single place name, the history of every site is discussed, each rival opinion critically dissected, then crisply thrust aside. Pashley’s erudition is simply phenomenal: as his obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1859 comments: ‘..the man who had ever read half as much Greek as Mr Pashley knew by heart might … make some pretensions to scholarship’. Sometimes the reader wishes he would give the dazzling display of etymology and recondite mythology a rest and just describe more fully what he sees on the ground, but in this and in his similarly frustrating tendency to treat Homer and any later historian as equally useful guides he must surely be considered a typical product of his Cambridge Classical education. Pashley’s interest in modern day Crete and Cretans is palpable and one of his most sympathetic characteristics. He demonstrates a great admiration of and sympathy for the oppressed Christian Greek inhabitants of Crete: the Greek War of Independence is over, but the Cretans are still condemned by the Great Powers of Europe to the capricious and despotic rule of the Turks. These Turks receive a bad press from Pashley: local governors are always discovered reclining on their divans, smoking and taking their ease; while happy to chat with him they are unhelpful about his journeys and too lazy to order the opening the city gates when he arrives after dark; few of them have taken the trouble to learn any Greek; and any Turkish guides they provide are ‘ignorant and stupid’(Pashley 1837, I.62). Fairly early on in his journey, however, Pashley falls in with Captain Manias (Figure 4), a hero of the Christian Cretan resistance, who offers his service as a guide and of whose courage, resourcefulness and loyalty Pashley cannot speak sufficiently highly. The two become firm friends and Pashley transcribes many of the Captain’s stories of the Turkish atrocities and Christian heroism during the uprisings that preceded the uneasy peace currently prevailing. In the cave of Melidhomi, for example, more than three hundred villagers were smoked to death in 1822: until Pashley, no-one has ventured into the cavern which is now a tomb, and where the water jars and other utensils brought in by the unlucky fugitives are gradually being encased by stalagmites; but emboldened by his presence friends and relatives of the dead crowd in to view the dreadful scene, where ‘the bones and skulls of the poor Christians are so thickly scattered, that it is almost impossible to avoid crushing them as we pick our steps along’ …( Pashley 1837, I.136) And while Pashley may grumble about the meagre food, at the same time he is warmly appreciative of the hospitality

Figure 3. A. Schranz, Portrait of Captain Manias. Wood engraving. Pashley 1937, I, 77. of those who have so little to give, and frequently comments on how difficult it is to reward his hosts or guides, who take helpfulness and generosity to strangers for granted. He delights in transcribing and translating songs and ballads and provides a vivid description of a visit to a hut where athletic games on an Homeric scale are in progress (Pashley 1837, I.244-6). He finds himself highly susceptible to an ‘apparition of female beauty’ he meets on the road in western Crete (Pashley 1837, II.126). And towards the end of his journey – and the journal – his labours and the privations of Lent simultaneously conclude in the explosion of feasting and joy that marks the Greek celebration of Easter, which he joyfully participates in and vividly describes. Pashley also loves the Cretan landscape with its everchanging vistas of mountains, sea and swift-flowing rivers, springs and fountains; and ruins too have an emotional as well as an historical attraction for him. At Knossos, for example, he shows both his rational, enlightenment training and his romantic weakness for the evocative power of the past. He seeks in vain for traces of the famous labyrinth that he knows from tradition and from the designs of the local coins, sensibly concluding that ‘there is no sufficient 124

Lucilla Burn: Robert Pashley and the Pashley sarcophagus

Figure 5. The ‘Pashley Sarcophagus’. Fitzwilliam Museum GR.1.1835. The principal scene, carved in high relief, Triumph of Dionysos; the small frieze above includes characterful vignettes of satyrs, maenads and an elderly serving woman.

shows the

reason for believing that the ‘ ...labyrinth ever had a more real existence than its fabled occupant…’ (Pashley 1837, I.208). But still the landscape is not without its effect: he lingers over his long-drawn-out description – ‘the natural caverns and excavated sepulchres seen in the immediate neighbourhood of the site of Cnossos call to mind the wellknown ancient legend respecting the … labyrinth’ (Pashley 1837, I.208) and with evident reluctance tears himself away from ‘the few shapeless heaps of masonry, which alone recall to the remembrance of the passing traveller (the city’s) ancient and bygone splendour’ (Pashley 1837, I.209). The sarcophagus that we name from Pashley (Figure 5) is a fine and stylistically early-seeming example of metropolitan Roman workmanship (Fitzwilliam Museum GR.1.1835, see Budde and Nicholls 1964, 98-102). It is decorated on one of its long sides and both short ends with Dionysiac scenes: the principal scene shows the Triumph of Dionysos, returning from his Eastern campaigns in a chariot drawn by centaurs, preceded by an entourage that includes Pan, satyrs and maenads, some riding on an elephant: the short sides show two satyrs carrying the infant Dionysos in a liknon, and Silenus swinging in a hammock rocked by Erotes. The vertical edge of the lid bears a lively, miniature scene of feasting satyrs and maenads. The sarcophagus is almost certainly made, both box and lid, of Luna (Carrara) marble; it is generally dated to the Hadrianic period. The sarcophagus was first spotted by an agent of the Admiral of the Mediterranean fleet, Sir Pulteney Malcolm, on the shore at Arvi, a small settlement on the south coast of Crete, to the south-east of Gortyn. By the time he found it, it had already been broken open (either in antiquity or more recently) – by looters hoping to find gold. He gathered up all the pieces he could find, both on the surface and below ground, and removed them to Khania. When Pashley himself arrived at Arvi, he found a few more fragments, which presumably he collected; he also

mentions seeing ‘the massive ornamented covering of the sarcophagus’ (Pashley 1837, I.276). This most probably refers to the lid of a different coffin, in fact the ‘tiled’ lid of an Attic style sarcophagus also in the Fitzwilliam Museum, given by Vice-Admiral Spratt in 1853 (Fitzwilliam Museum GR.1.1853; see Budde and Nicholls 1964, 97). Returning to Khania, Pashley was able to spend some time examining and supervising the reconstruction of the fragments of the sarcophagus in a hayloft belonging to the English consul; ‘(I) thus discovered that several considerable gaps still existed in the monument. I thought it worth while to endeavour to render it as perfect as possible, and, before I left the island, I therefore caused fresh excavations to be made… and had ultimately the great satisfaction of obtaining five additional fragments. When they were combined with those previously obtained, the sarcophagus was rendered almost as perfect as when it came from the chisel of the artist’ ( Pashley 1837, II.2). Pashley devotes several pages to erudite description of the iconography of the sarcophagus. He further says that ‘The pieces (of the sarcophagus), on their arrival in England, were joined, under the inspection of Sir Francis Chantrey, and the sarcophagus was given, by Sir Pulteney Malcolm, to the University of Cambridge. It will be placed in the Fitzwilliam Museum’ (Pashley 1837, II.2, note 2). It was probably at this point in its history, just before it reached the Museum, that the box and lid of the sarcophagus were so firmly plastered together that the future chances of safely detaching them to have a look inside seem remote. (From the extensive bibliography on Sir Francis Chantrey, sculptor and cast-maker, see the succinct account of Penny 2002, xxvii-xxx, and the more discursive work of Dunkerley 1995). Given its findspot it was not unreasonable for Pashley to describe the coffin as ‘an ancient monument of Cretan sculpture’ (Pashley 1837, II.2): for us one of its most remarkable features is actually the fact that so fine an example of metropolitan Roman workmanship should 125

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor have been found in a place so very far from Rome. This seems to be the sole example of its kind found in Crete and indeed no metropolitan Roman sarcophagus has been found anywhere further east in the Roman world. (Sanders 1982, 47 lists some fifteen Roman sarcophagi – two of Asiatic type, the Pashley and twelve Attic.) It is hard to reconstruct with any certainty the circumstances in which it came there. Arvi is not thought to have been a major settlement (Sanders 1982, 143), but it may conceivably have been one of the ports that served the Roman city of Gortyn. The fact that at least one other coffin lid was found there shows it must have been a place of sufficient standing to need a cemetery where people of some wealth were buried. In later antiquity it was the site of a Christian basilica (Sanders 1982, 95, 143). The south coast of Crete lies on the corn route from Italy to Egypt so presumably the coffin could have been brought from Rome in an empty corn ship en route to Egypt, perhaps a pious gift from the family of a wealthy exile.

Figures 1, 2 and 5 are reproduced by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Bibliography Beard, M. 1993. Casts and cast-offs: the origins of the Museum of Classical Archaeology. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 39, 1-29. Blunt, W. 1964. Cockerell: Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, friend of Ruskin and William Morris, and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. London, Hamish Hamilton, Budde, L. and Nicholls, R. V. 1964. A Catalogue of the Greek and Roman Sculpture in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge. Cambridge, University Press. Clarke, E.D. 1909. Greek Marbles Brought from the Shores of the Euxine, Archipelago and Mediterranean and Deposited in the Vestibule of the Public Library of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge, University Press. Dunkerley, S. 1995. Francis Chantrey Sculptor. From Norton to Knighthood. Sheffield, Hallamshire Press. Garnett, R. (revised E.Baigent) 2004. Edward Pashley, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 42, 965. Oxford University Press. Hörmann, H. 1932. Die inneren Propyläen von Eleusis. Berlin and Leipzig, Walter de Gruyter and Co. McConnell, A., Edward Daniel Clarke 2004. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 11, 863-5. Oxford University Press. Moore, D., 2010. Dawn of Discovery: The Early British .

Pashley, R. 1837. Travels in Crete. Cambridge, University Press. Penny, N. 1992. Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum: 1540 to the Present Day. Volume III: British. Oxford, University Press. Sanders, I. F., 1982. Roman Crete. Warminster, Aries and Phillips Ltd. 126

Roach Smith and the antiquities of London: the sculptures Martin Henig and Penny Coombe Abstract Charles Roach Smith was unusual not only in collecting from a specific site (Londinium), but in doing so in order to rescue antiquities for posterity. His collection was wide-ranging, but included some of the most important sculptures from Roman London, which provide the basis for the 10th fascicule of the Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani Great Britain volume, currently in preparation. Keywords Charles Roach Smith, Roman London, sculpture, collecting.

Collections have been assembled for a range of motives, amongst which acquisitiveness, cupidity, personal aggrandisement often rank large. For this reason archaeologists are often highly suspicious of collectors, as can be seen to this day in the often uneasy relationship between archaeologists and detectorists. Charles Roach Smith was different, a scholar of phenomenal range and learning, who seems to have been motivated by a desire to educate and inform through his writing and his founding of societies, notably the British Archaeological Association. Arthur was a distinguished director of the Association and Martin Henig was for some years Hon. Editor and recently celebrated Roach Smith in this connection (Henig 2007, 17-25). However in this paper we concentrate on his rescuing of Antiquities, especially from building sites in London, which resulted in the effective formation of a Roman Britain gallery in the British Museum. Although his work elsewhere should be remembered, notably his rescue of the Faussett Collection, acquired by his wealthy friend Joseph Mayer, Roach Smith does not seem to have been recognised in wider archaeological circles as a pioneer of the same stature as Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers. That is a pity because a Middle Class chemist with international leanings and wide familiarity with Europe is a more suitable hero for our times than a soldier and imperialist. C.R. Smith (or Roach Smith; he sometimes used his middle name as an additional surname) was very much a figure of the Enlightenment rather than fitting in with our rather misguided notions of what a Victorian gentleman might be. And this shows in both the style and the content of his writings, especially his Illustrations of Roman London which using observations, examples of antiquities in his own collection as well as those of his contemporaries and older finds provides an admirable survey of Londinium insofar as it was known in 1859. The introduction to his earlier Catalogue of the Museum of London Antiquities collected by, and the property of Charles Roach Smith (1854) provides the motivation for his own collecting activities. This was the time when there was extensive digging of sewers throughout the city. The workmen were destroying archaeological deposits but of

course selling finds and Roach Smith was not alone in collecting. Unfortunately as he noted here and elsewhere with derision the Corporation was not interested in setting up a museum, and most of these collections were scattered through auction. Roach Smith writes (Smith 1854, vivii): ‘It has ever been my wish to protect from a similar calamitous fate the city antiquities which I have been enabled to gather together; and the present Catalogue is a result of that feeling…’ His museum was open to the archaeological student and as to its fate: ‘It is out of my power to say; but I shall endeavour to preserve it intact and entire; and whether it may remain private, or become public property, its integrity is best ensured in the reference and verification afforded by the Catalogue’ (Smith 1854, vii). This proved to be the case and the antiquities eventually found a home in the British Museum, which had previously acquired other items in which Roach Smith had been interested including the over life-size bronze head of Hadrian from the Thames (Figure 1). In introducing the latter he had written in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (Smith, 1846, 286-291): ‘It is our duty rather to rejoice over what has been saved from the general wreck, than to lament over what cannot be recovered; and especially when we consider how few of the many similar relics which are accidentally dug up from their resting places are secured from the hand of ignorance, which unintentionally, and simply from want of knowledge of their value, consigns them to a fate from which there is no recall.’ In the remarks which follow we are largely confining ourselves to sculpture, because we have recently prepared a catalogue of Roman Sculpture from London and SouthEast England for the Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani (Coombe, Grew, Hayward, Henig, forthcoming). In doing so we are conscious of how much we owe to Roach Smith and especially his avowed intention to record and rescue such objects from oblivion. Our catalogue does not include figurines but for the purpose of this paper we are including some very fine examples found in excavating the bed of the Thames near London Bridge in 1837 in order to aid

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor pl. 1): ‘Having been carried away, by people in the employ of the Commissioners of Sewers, beyond the precincts of the City, [it] was about to be sent to a remote part of the country, but fortunately I heard of the discovery and recovered it.’ That was not the end of the matter, however, and he recalls in his Retrospections (Smith 1886, 207-8): ‘For this, I was summoned before the Lord Mayor as a receiver of stolen property! I was, however, treated with respect by the civic bench and cheered by the workmen, who proved true to me and false to their employers. The press also, as usual, took my part, The Times especially…’ Fortunately, he did extricate himself and obtained possession of the statue. Another stone sculpture, this time of marble, depicted three draped female figures standing in a row. He considered the group ‘to be a representation of the Deae Matres though that mythic triad is almost always personified in a sitting posture’ (Smith 1854, 2, no.3). In fact the fragment is probably part of a rare marble sarcophagus from London. Roach Smith was very interested in, and knowledgeable about, the Matres. He wrote about the fine group of three found near St Olave’s Church, Crutched Friars around 1837 and he illustrated these and compared them with other representations of the Matres from the Rhineland (Figure 3; Smith and Wright 1847, 239-55; Smith 1859, 33-45).

Figure 1. Bronze head of Hadrian, dredged from the Thames near London Bridge,1834. Ht. 42cm. navigation, four of which were acquired by Roach Smith and are now amongst the finest small bronzes in the Roman Britain collection at the British Museum (Smith 1840, 3846; Smith 1854, 4-6, nos. 11-14). The prize stone sculpture in Roach Smith’s collection was the statue of a huntsman wearing a Phrygian cap and holding a bow found at Bevis Marks in the east of the City (Smith 1854, 1, no.1, pl.1). Although some later commentators have made the identification with Attis Roach Smith was more cautious, rightly as it turns out: the late Ralph Merrifield has equated it with the huntergod of whom another statue was found some 30 years ago in a well under Southwark cathedral. This was, of course, unknown to Roach Smith though he, amongst others, recorded the altar with relief from Goldsmith’s Hall, Foster Lane (Figure 2) depicting a deity we now regard as identical to the god from Bevis Marks. His contemporaries had identified the subject as Diana, but Roach Smith’s scholarly caution did at least suggest to him that the costume of the Goldsmiths’ Hall figure seemed to be male, and he agreed with them only grudgingly (Smith 1848, 134, pl. 45). Roach Smith did not acquire the Bevis Marks huntsman without difficulty (Smith 1854, 1, no.1,

A fragment of column shaft decorated with lattice pattern, also in the collection (Smith 1854, 2, no.4), seems to have come from the Roman Riverside Wall in Upper Thames Street, a wall which has recently yielded other sculptures including remains of an arch and a screen of gods. In this case the archaeological significance of the find in the dating of that Wall to a late period and its inclusion of spolia along its length has only recently been appreciated, though Roach Smith argued strongly for the existence of such a defensive Wall 150 years before its discovery. A star item in his collection was a colossal bronze hand from the Thames which he illustrated for the first time in his Catalogue (Smith 1854, 6-7, no.15), with the following remarks: ‘The remains of bronze statues which have been found in France and England show that the chief cities of the Northern provinces were enriched and ornamented with these costly and imposing works of art. From the value of the material comparatively few examples have come down to our own times.’ Thus he would perhaps not be surprised at the more recent discoveries of several other fragments of colossal bronze statues in London,1 though he goes on to list the head of Hadrian found nearby which was already in the British Museum, the head of ‘Apollo’ [sic. actually Minerva] in Bath and a horse’s leg from Lincoln. He continues: ‘The statue of Apollo, of heroic size discovered at Lillebonne, and now in the possession of the Messrs Woodburn of In addition to the colossal hand and the Head of Hadrian, two fingers, two arms, one hand and two feet have been found: Coombe, Grew, Hayward and Henig forthcoming, nos. 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 223. 1

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Figure 2. Limestone altar depicting a hunter god Goldsmiths’ Hall, Foster Lane, 1830. Ht. 58cm

from

Figure 3. Limstone statue of three mother goddesses  found near St Olave’s Church, Hart Street 1839-41. W.84cm 129

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Figure 4. Bronze figurine of Apollo, London Bridge, 1837. Ht. 10.5cm.

found in dredging near

St Martin’s Lane, is the finest and most perfect example of northern provincial art in this country, and should be secured for the national collection, or rather for that of France to which it more properly belongs.’ This lack of nationalist rivalry, indeed Roach Smith’s thoroughly European attitude, is remarkable for its time and he would be delighted that this splendid gilt bronze statue is, indeed, now one of the treasures of the Louvre (Espérandieu 1911, 184, no.3084). However a much smaller figure of Apollo (Figure 4) did come into his possession. It was one of the bronzes found near London Bridge which he described as being ‘of the very highest class of art’; ‘a masterpiece of ideal grace and beauty. The countenance is pensive and full of gentle expression with earnest thought, such as Raphael has so admirably bestowed upon the fine personification of this god in the charming painting of Apollo and Marsyas, in the possession of Mr Morris Moore….The entire figure is beautifully moulded to pourtray [sic] early youth.’ (Smith 1859, 68, pl. 15; Smith 1854, 4, no.1) Roach Smith also acquired a complete figure of a standing Mercury (Figure 5), a standing Jupiter (now headless) and a seated figure (perhaps Mercury) (Smith 1859, 68-9, pl. 18; Smith 1854, 4-5, nos.12-14). Other figures were also found, a hermaphrodite holding a mirror and binding its hair and a figure of Attis (Smith 1859, 68-9, pls. 17, 19). The former like the figures in Roach Smith’s collection ended up in the British Museum but the latter (which Roach Smith believed to be a priest of Cybele) is now lost.

The archaeological context was important and Roach Smith’s account (Smith 1859, 70-71) bears repeating today: ‘It is very apparent that these bronze figures have been intentionally mutilated. This is particularly palpable in the present instance. The image of Apollo bears on both sides of the legs just above the point where they are sundered, marks of some sharp instrument, such as a hatchet would leave if struck with force; this could not possibly have happened after they were thrown into the Thames but must have been perpetrated by the early converts to Christianity, who, unable to appreciate fine works of art, looked upon them as demons or emanations of the devil. Before such fanatical ignorance every tangible representation, whether of gods or of human beings, fell indiscriminately; and the effigies of the soldier, or of the peaceful civilian upon his tomb, were as systematically cut and hammered to pieces as the statues and images of gods and goddesses.’ The sonorous prose is aimed at the barbarism of a past age but it finds an echo in the diatribe with which he begins the book of the citizens and Corporation of the London of his day, likewise destroyers and indifferent to the fate of London’s antiquities (Smith 1859, iii): ‘The citizens must share the opprobrium which attaches to the Corporation for the indifference to the antiquities of the metropolis; for when a few years since, an attempt was made, in a large and stormy meeting to establish in the City a free library and a museum, they scouted the proposal under the pretext that the funds of the Corporation were adequate for the purpose without the new impost proposed, which

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Figure 5. Bronze figurine of Mercury, found in dredging near London Bridge, 1837. Ht. 11.5cm. would probably have amounted to about one half a penny in the pound…. The City of London has no museum of collections of its antiquities. The severest condemnation of the Corporation is the fact itself.’ Roach Smith died in 1890 but in his empathy with the past, his high standards of scholarship, his liberality and his desire to preserve not for himself but for the public, and for posterity, here is an archaeological hero for our time and of all the archaeologists of past times perhaps the one we would find most sympathetic.

Bibliography Coombe, P., Grew, F., Hayward, K., Henig, M. forthcoming. Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani, Great Britain i.10 Roman Sculpture from London and the South East of England. Oxford, Oxford University Press for the British Academy. Espérandieu, E. 1911. Recueil general des bas-reliefs, statues et bustes de la Gaule romaine IV. Paris, Imprimerie Nationale. Henig, M. 2007. Historical Archaeology and the British .

Smith, C. R. 1840. On some Roman bronzes discovered in the bed of the Thames in January 1837. Archaeologia 28, 38-46. Smith, C. R. 1846. Notes on a bronze head of Hadrian. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 1, 286-91. Smith, C. R. and Wright, T. 1847. On certain mythic personages, mentioned on Roman altars found in England and on the Rhine, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 2, 239-55. Smith, C. R. 1848. Collectanea Antiqua: Etchings and Notices of Ancient Remains, Illustrative of the Habits, Customs, and History of the Past Ages, vol. I. London, J.R.Smith. Smith, C. R. 1854. Catalogue of the Museum of London Antiquities. London, printed for subscribers. Smith, C. R. 1859. Illustrations of Roman London. London, printed for subscribers. Smith, C. R. 1886. Retrospections, Social and Archaeological, vol. 2. London, G.Bell and Sons.

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A private library in 19th century Rome: the sale of Giovanni Pietro Campana’s library* Michele Benucci and Susanna Sarti Abstract The Marquis Giovanni Pietro Campana (1808-1880) is well known as a collector of antiquities and modern art and crafts, but he was also a collector of books. Archive documents and articles in contemporary reviews testify that his library included rare books, codices and manuscripts, among which were copies of the Trionfi by Petrarch and the Divina Commedia, both with manuscript notes attributed to Galileo Galilei. However, a book from the library of Antonio Sarti, held in the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, the Catalogo di una biblioteca assai pregevole già pertinente ad un celebre letterato ed archeologo ben distinto, now brings to light the complete Campana library. This catalogue, which has “Biblioteca Campana” written in gold letters on the original leather cover, includes records for all material in the Marquis’ library, which was put up for auction from 2nd May to 1st June 1861 at Rome. Such a catalogue allows us to see how books might have been used and provides evidence for the social roles or aspirations of the book owner. Moreover, it gives information about the book trade in the period. Keywords Campana, collections, library, 19th-century, Rome.

The Marquis Giovanni Pietro Campana inherited a large library from his father Prospero, who had probably received part of it from his father Giovanni Pietro senior. Prospero in his will bequeathed all he owned to his firstborn with the proviso that the latter had to maintain and enlarge the family archive and library.1 Thus, the items acquired by Campana’s father and grandfather formed the beginnings of his own library and personal archives, but he expanded them considerably. The Marquis was also a collector of books, codices and manuscripts, and he won admiration for his library on several occasions. Campana owned rare and valuable volumes as is evident from articles in the publications of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica and from the text of publisher Saverio Del Monte in the Avvertimento for a new edition (dated 1844) of the Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura by Gian Paolo Lomazzo. Del Monte dedicated this edition to Campana, with the information that he had received from Campana a very rare copy of Lomazzo’s treatise dating from 1585 which contained the sixteenth * We wish to thank Hildegard Wiegel for her patience and support, Michel Vickers, Stefania Berutti, Melanie Mendonça, Stephanie Moore and Livia Saldicco for their valuable suggestions and help. We are much indebted to the Institutions of Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome, the Archivio storico dell’Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell’Autonomia Scolastica (ex-Indire) in Florence, the Archaeological German Institute and the Biblioteca della Facoltà di Conservazione dei Beni Culturali dell’Università di Viterbo. 1 ‘Avendo io avuto la diligenza di tenere un piccolo archivio di tutte le carte, e documenti relativi all’acquisti fatti dai miei antenati e da me sottoscritto, unitamente a tutti cui che riguarda li diritti della mia casa e famiglia, e del mio asse ereditario, intendo, e voglio, che dai miei Eredi sia non solo esattamente conservato ma che venga ancora nell’opportunità continuato nel modo stesso, come si è da me praticato. Avendo io sottoscritto avuta una particolare propenzione per la letteratura, ed avendo in conseguenza fatta una raccolta di libri di varie specie posti nella Libreria che attualmente si trova nella casa di mia abitazione, intendo e voglio che ancor questa Libreria rimanga unita, e soggetta al vincolo della sopra espressa primogenitura con tutte quelle leggi, e istituzioni, e proibizioni d’alienazioni ordinate per la medesima Primogenitura. Tal’è la mia volontà, questo dì ed anno suddetti’ (Rome, State Archive, Tribunale Criminale di Roma, B. 2150).

chapter of Book VI (Figure 1). This is most significant, as, due to a mistake, almost all copies of this well-known volume had been printed in the 16th century without this chapter. Campana’s friend and antiquarian Giampietro Secchi used to write to him about ancient objects as well as books: Pregiatissimo amico. Rimando i canestri, e con essi alquanti fascicoli intrusi fra i miei libri, che debbono appartenere a lei. Ho trovata mancante di tre volumi la Bibbia Vendicata del Du Clot, e la collezione delle opere di Ennio Q. Visconti, almeno di tre, o quattro volumi che probabilmente staranno nascosti tra gli impicci ... (Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, Autografi A.31) The correspondence between Campana and Eugenio Alberi, who prepared an edition of all Galilei’s works for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, is also revealing (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Carteggi Vari 291,128). Alberi knew from the newspaper Monitore Toscano that Campana had acquired an edition of Dante, which contained notes at that time attributed to Galilei, and he therefore requested information on this edition from Campana (1855, no. 214). Even in the Causa Campana (Rome, State Archive, Tribunale Criminale di Roma, B. 2149 and 2150), the proceedings concerning the trial for fraud against Campana, it is pointed out that the Marquis looked after his library carefully, and that ‘Non meno degli studi iconografici era il Marchese invogliato dalle opere e dagli scritti inediti di sommi Italiani.’ A small hardback volume that belonged to Antonio Sarti’s library and today housed in the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome (coll. SARTI B33 - inventory BRS 11882)

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Figure 1: Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura by Gian Paolo Lomazzo, edition Del Monte 1844. Dedication to Gio. Pietro Campana.

The contents of Campana’s art collection before its dispersal are known thanks to the Cataloghi Campana, the complete catalogue of the Museum published in late

1857 or 1858, while the books, codices and prints of Campana’s library are listed in detail in the volume kept at the Accademia di San Luca. It is a catalogue of the auction sale held from the 2nd May to the 1st June 1861 in the shop of Giovanni Ferretti, Piazza della Minerva 60, Rome, and includes records of all the material in the Marquis’ library. It is entitled Catalogo di una biblioteca assai pregevole già pertinente ad un celebre letterato e archeologo ben distinto, and it has ‘Biblioteca Campana’ written in gold letters on the original leather cover. The auction lasted for 25 days and the catalogue is accordingly subdivided into 25 sections (called vendita, i.e. sale); in it, the number of volumes is impressive and the main seven topics (I-VII) are listed at the beginning (Figure 3) 134

.

(Figure 2), gives us an idea of the contents of Campana’s library before its sale in 1861, when the Marquis and his wife Emily Rowles were already in exile in Naples. Three years before, the Marquis had been convicted of fraudulent appropriation from the Rome Monte di Pietà, of which he was the director, and condemned to 20 years imprisonment. Eventually, he received a decree of clemency which commuted his sentence from imprisonment to exile from the Pontifical State. In order to pay the debt, Campana was requested to sign a contract, transferring his collection as well as part of his personal property to the Pontifical State (Sarti 2001, 119).

Michele Benucci and Susanna Sarti: A private library in 19th century Rome

Figures 2-3: Catalogo di una biblioteca assai pregevole già pertinente ad un celebre letterato e

archeologo ben distinto: pages with list of the auction days and list of the seven topics; pages with manuscript notes concerning the sale.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor I. Della letteratura greca, latina, italiana e d’altre antiche e moderne nazioni The first topic concerned Greek, Latin, Italian and other ancient and modern literature, and a rich variety of rare and precious volumes. Campana owned the works of the principal Latin authors, often in rare editions, dating from the 15th century onwards. The first edition of Fragmenta by Quintus Ennius and the works of Lucilius, Plautus, Terence, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius were in Campana’s library; there are also Cicero, Julius Caesar, Cornelius Nepos, Curtius Rufus, Sallust, Lucretius, Livy, Horace, Ovid and Vergil. Furthermore, there is the edition of the Aeneid translated by Annibal Caro and a copy with illustrations by the 17th-century engraver Pietro Sante Bartoli, by whom further important works are included in the library: ‘Picturae Antiquae Crypt. Roman. et Sepulchra Nasonum delineat. Et incisa a Petro Sancte Bartholi descript. a Petro Belloro f. Romae 1738. I rami sono freschissimi’ (vendita XI no. 131); ‘Causei M., Gemme antiche incise da Santi Bartoli 8 Roma 1805 vol. 2. Esemplare in carta cerulea’ (vendita XII no. 43); ‘Bellori. Antiche lucerne sepolcrali figurate disegnate ed intagliate da Pietro Santi Bartoli fol. Roma 1691. Prime prove’ (vendita XIII no. 110). Drawings of ancient paintings attributed to Sante Bartoli and belonging to Campana, were described by the archaeologist Emil Braun in the Bullettino dell’Instituto (3, 1839, 164-167), and published in Monumenti dell’Instituto (II, plate IX). The works of Martial, Petronius, Quintilian, Probus, the Astronomica by Hyginus, the Phaedrus’ Fabulae, the Pharsalia by Lucan, the description of the world by Pomponius Mela as well as the satires of Juvenal and of Persius, various editions of Pliny’s Historia Naturale; also Frontinus, Columella, Seneca and Tacitus, Statius, Apuleius, St. Augustine, Cassiodorius, Eutropius and Solinus. Also included are the Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae with illustrations, several editions of Vitruvius’ de Architectura, the rare 1531 edition of the De rebus Gothorum by Procopius, the Libri rhetoricorum ad Herennium and Scriptores Historiae Augustae, the histories of Ammianus Marcellinus, the Institutiones of Justinian, and the Itinerarium of Rutilius Claudius Namatianus. This was obviously an important collection covering the greater part of Latin literature, but the works of Greek literature appear to be less comprehensive. They did, however, include the poetry of Anacreon and Sappho, the works of Plato and Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, Strabo, Xenophon, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, Tertullian, Lucian, Philostratus, Athenaeus and Cassius Dio. Also the Oedipus Coloneus by Sophocles, and more editions of the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. There are several copies of the Iliad: one in Latin, one translated by Vincenzo Monti, one in blank verse, and an example with ‘Picturae antiquae ex Codic. Mediolanensi fol. Roma 1835 con rami’ (vendita XIX no. 90). The Odyssey is engraved by ‘Thomas Piroli d’apres les desseins composes par Jean Flaxman sculpteur à Rome’

(vendita XIX no. 100), but there was also a copy translated by Ippolito Pindemonte. Finally, several editions of the Descriptio Graeciae by Pausanias, one provided with engravings, more editions of Flavius Joseph’s Jewish Antiquities, one published in 1540 in Basel, and another with images, were all part of Campana’s library which was rich in illustrated books, demonstrating the owner’s love for iconography. Grammars and dictionaries of ancient Greek and Latin as well as Hebrew and English, German, French, Spanish and Italian and even Arabian languages formed part of the library. Indeed, Campana had received an education in classical studies at the Collegio Nazareno in Rome and he knew French and English. Italian literature played a very important role, with the works of the most well-known authors of that time: Dante Aligheri, Boccaccio and Petrarch, Luigi Pulci, Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini, Angelo Poliziano, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, Pietro Bembo, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Baldassarre Castiglione, Galileo Galilei, Pietro Metastasio, Goldoni, Vittorio Alfieri and Giuseppe Parini, Ippolito Pindemonte, Vincenzo Monti, Alessandro Manzoni, Ugo Foscolo and Giacomo Leopardi, Niccolò Tommaseo and Silvio Pellico. There was also the first history of Italian literature written by Girolamo Tiraboschi in the 18th century (vendita IX no. 129), a history of Italian literature by Juan Andrés published in 1813 (vendita XIX no. 61), and the Storia della letteratura italiana nel secolo XVIII by Antonio Lombardi (vendita XXII no. 34). Of the Italian poets, Campana clearly preferred Dante. He owned several editions of the Divina Commedia, some very rare,2 and other works as well as commentaries and books on the author. Campana shared his passion for Dante with his Florentine antiquarian friend Ottavio Gigli, who published a book on the subject in 1855. A letter written to him by Campana from Dresden (13 February 1866) recalls the Marquis’ passion for the iconography of Dante Alighieri: [...] Vi ricorderete che parecchi anni indietro vi pregai di farmi avere le copie esatte de’ ritratti antichi ed autentici di Dante, che in pittura o scultura esistevano a Firenze e questi erano per lo studio della iconografia che allora io facevane. Ora mi trovo possedere due grandi fogli da voi mandatimi, l’uno contenente due miniature colorate che sembrano desunte da pergamena di codici e un bassorilievo in profilo col busto color di terra cotta colla epigrafe su Dante, l’altro contente una bella e grande testa colorita del poeta laureato ed un’altra di semplice contorno. Ora mi mancano le indicazioni. ‘La Divina Commedia col commento di Cristof. Landino fol Ven. 1497 Con rami in legno. Edizione rara’(vendita I no. 86) and ‘La Divina Commedia coi commenti di Cristoforo Landino fol Vinegia par Octaviano Scoto da Monza 1484. Mancante il primo quaderno con postille; che da un tal Sig. Giorgetti asserto calligrafo si dicano del Galileo come dall’inserto documento’ (vendita XXIV no. 128). Cf. Favaro 1887, 375, no. 370. 2

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Figure 4: Ricci Parracciani collection, statue representing Emily Campana holding a book. After Cappelli and Silvagni 2006, 376.

Potreste voi terminarle? Ve ne sarei sommamente grato e spero che la memoria vi assista trattandosi di cose di Firenze, generalmente note […] (Florence, Archive ex-INDIRE, Corrispondenza Gigli – M.se Campana, anno 1866, letter Dresden, 13 February).

e la Divina Commedia opera storico critica estetica volgarizzata illustrata e presentata a’ studiosi italiani (Stabilimento Tipografico Ligustico, Genua 1853), a translation of a work on Dante written by the French Paul Drouilhet de Sigalas.

The book in Campana’s library ‘La Divina Commedia accresciuta di un doppio rimario e di tre indici per opera di G. A. Volpi 8 Padova Comino 1726 vol. 3 con ritratto. Bellissima edizione, rarissima’ (vendita XX no. 42) is probably the Divina Commedia with a portrait of Dante reproduced in the statue from the Ricci Parracciani Collection representing Emily Campana holding a book (Figure 4). It is likely that the statue, attributed to Tenerani (Cappelli and Silvagni 2006, 375-377, no. IV I.10) is the one mentioned as being the work of Vincenzo Gajassi by Luigi Scalchi in his poetical descriptions of paintings and statues exhibited in artists’ ateliers in Rome in 1855 (Scalchi 1855, 47-50) (Figure 5). The snake motive, which can be seen here in Emily’s bracelet, often recurs in the work of the sculptor (Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 51, 1998, s.v. V. Gajassi).

Campana also liked Torquato Tasso and owned three editions of the Gerusalemme Liberata, one with engravings, as well as copies of the Aminta and the Torrismondo, and an album with Manoscritti inediti di Torquato Tasso posseduti ed illustrati e dal conte Mariani Alberti e pubblicati con incisioni e facsimili per cura di R. Gentilucci, Lucca 1837. There was also an edition dated 1820 in 33 volumes with engravings and the portraits of Tasso and Eleonora d’Este (vendita XVI no. 50).

Finally, Marcellino da Civezza wrote a long and warm dedication to ‘Sua Eccellenza la Signora Marchesa Campana’, in L’arte in Italia. Dante Alighieri

There were two rare editions of the Orlando Furioso dated 1549 and 1567. The importance of Ariosto’s works with engravings (vendita XXV no. 119) is obvious from the presence of a cross that is explained in the Avvertimenti of the volume in these terms: ‘I libri contrassegnati con la croce in principio dell’articolo, non si rilasceranno se non a chi esibirà l’opportuna licenza di poterli leggere’, i.e. the cross was a sign to indicate books which could be sold only to those who were worthy of reading them.

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Figure 5: Scalchi 1855: page 47. The collection of works of Italian literature, which appears to be both complete and accurate, was probably due in part to Prospero Campana, who was member of the most prestigious Roman literary academies of the time, such as the Accademia degli Aborigeni, the Accademia degli Arcadi and the Accademia de’ Forti. This section recalls the Campana Museum, a sort of encyclopaedic assemblage of Italian art from Antiquity to the 18th century. Here it is possible to detect Campana’s project for the creation of a museum in which he wanted to bring together as many examples of Italian art as possible, probably to illustrate the history of Italy (Sarti 2001, 126 and Gaultier 2011). It is probable that Campana devised his own way of contributing to the creation of the new country, demonstrating his beliefs not only through his

collection, a museum illustrating the history of Italian art, but also through his library. Campana’s library had a less impressive section of foreign literature, but it included works by Montesquieu, Moliere, Voltaire, Prosper Merimée, Goethe, Milton, Henry Fielding, and William Wordsworth. There were moreover Les fables illustres of La Fontaine, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and the Poems of Ossian. It is worth remembering in this context that Campana himself wrote two short poems in praise of the antiquities of Italy (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Autografi Ferrajoli, Raccolta Ferrajoli, f. 2325 and f. 2326) and that he composed an ode on the death of Lady Gwendoline Talbot, Princess Borghese, which was translated into 138

Michele Benucci and Susanna Sarti: A private library in 19th century Rome English by Maria Francesca Rossetti, the sister of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. II. Delle storie universali, particolari, municipali e di ogni altro genere a tal classe spettante This is a very rich section devoted to universal, particular and municipal histories. The history of many Italian towns is explained in beautifully illustrated volumes: Osimo, Camerino, Bologna, Genoa, Tuscolo, Preneste, Sorrento, Terni, Ravenna, Comacchio, Urbino, Civitanova, Rimini, Aquileia, Pisa, Orvieto and Perugia. A significant part of the library is dedicated to Italian history, with works such as Dialoghi sull’illustre Italia by Salvatore Betti, Des Espérances de l’Italie by Pier Silvestro Leopardi, the fourth volume of Delle Rivoluzioni di Italia by Carlo Denina and Storia degli stati italiani by Leo Enrico, Storia di Italia by Cesare Balbo, Storia delle guerre d’Italia del 1848-49 and the Codice di procedura civile pel Regno di Italia, once again hinting at the patriotism and nationalism of Campana. Quite an important part, however, is dedicated to the history and geography of Europe and to the rest of the world, including the Memorie storiche dell’Australia by Rosendo Salvado (vendita XXIII no. 68). III. Dei viaggi, scoperte ec. con bellissime incisioni e quasi tutte di freschissime prove This is also a rich section with travel writing and curiosities from all over the world: tour diaries, travel guides, dictionaries, monographs, reports written by travellers and scholars. There are guides to the main Italian towns (Rome, Perugia, Naples, Florence, Padua, Ravenna, Venice and Milan) as well as Gela, Fiesole, Benevento and Sora; itineraries and books with illustrations of Italy, sometimes with maps, e.g. the Manuel du voyageur en Sicilie (vendita III no. 61). Finally, the collection included books on Russia, India, the British Isles, China and Malta, often illustrated with maps or images such as ‘Finden’s Ports and Arbours of Great Britain 4 London 1836 Splendida edizione ornate di vedute’ (vendita V no. 90), and descriptions of towns such as Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, London, Berlin and Tunis.

Benjamin Delessert, who founded the first association of photography in the world, the Société Héliographique. Edouard Delessert developed the system of carte-de-visite printing, or photographic visiting cards, patented by André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, and he used kallitype, a contact printing process. IV. Delle arti belle e meccaniche col corredo delle analoghe tavole, figure, ritratti, ec. There are books with engravings and illustrations, with views, portraits or antiquities as well as the battles of Napoleon illustrated by the artists Andrea Appiani and Francesco Rosaspina (vendita XIII no. 120 and vendita XIX no. 104). Among the artists who depicted antiquities, Piranesi is represented with his Antichità di Roma and Tommaso Piroli with his Bassirilievi antichi di Roma. There is also an illustration of the columns of Trajan and Antoninus (vendita XIII no. 135) and ‘Pompeja disegnata nel 1825 al 30’ (vendita XVI no. 94), ‘Via Appia illustrata. 12 tavole in rame incise da Carlo Labruzzi di antiche prove’ (vendita XVII no. 95), and Le immagini con tutti i riversi degli imperatori romani by Enea Vico (vendita XVIII no. 58). In addition, there are also images of the marriage of Ferdinand I (vendita XV no. 117), drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (vendita XIX no. 93) and several books on iconology. ‘Due volumi in 4 gr. contenente una preziosissima raccolta di ritratti di uomini e donne illustri disegnati ed incisi dai più valenti artisti di varie nazioni’ (vendita I no. 129) reminds us of Campana’s interest in iconography together with his desire to commemorate famous men and women of the Italian peninsula, which is also evident in his museum. There, he achieved this end with the aid of his coin series and with Roman portraits, while he was less successful with the portraits in the modern section. V. Di ogni specie di archeologia sacra e profana, e specialmente di numismatica, in che v’è dovizia ad esuberanza

Campana also owned a luxury edition of the Raccolta di viaggi dalla scoperta del Nuovo Continente fino ai nostri giorni (Prato, Fratelli Giachetti, 1840-1845) by Francesco Costantino Marmocchi: ‘Ediz. di lusso con molte belle tavole incise in rame alcune delle quali miniate’ (vendita XII no. 131).

This is probably the most important part of the library, which also contains copies of the works of Campana (cf. Sarti 2001, 24-28). The section containing books on ancient and modern coins is impressive. Campana paid a great deal of attention to the coin collection which he had partly inherited from his father. In the Cataloghi Campana we read how Campana spent thirty years attempting to complete his cabinet which, starting from Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar, included all the series of emperors, empresses and their sons, until the last Byzantine emperors.

The Voyage aux villes maudites by Édouard Alexandre Henri Delessert (vendita I no. 14) was appreciated by Campana because of his interest in photography (Benucci and Sarti 2012, 9). Delessert had been introduced to photography by Gustave Le Gray and by his uncle

Many books were illustrated and there were several rare editions, inter many alia Louis Savot’s Discours sur les médailles antiques, ‘Opera ricercata e difficile a rinvenirsi’ (vendita XVII no. 77), Antoine Le Pois’s Discours sur les médailles et graveures antiques, principalement 139

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Romaines (Paris 1579), Selecta numismata antiqua ex museo Petri Seguini; Nicola Francesco Haym’s Del tesoro britannico parte prima’: ‘overo il museo nummario ove si contengono le medaglie greche e latine in ogni metallo e forma, non prima pubblicate, Francesco Angeloni’s La historia Augusta da Giulio Cesare a Constantino il Magno (Rome 1641), Jacopo Muselli’s Numismata Antiqua ab eo collecta, Charles Patin’s Introduzione alla storia della pratica delle medaglie (1673), and Numismata Imperatorum Romanorum, Joseph H. Eckhel’s Lezioni elementari di numismatica antica translated by Garonni, Enea Vico’s Discorso sopra le medaglie de gli antichi (1555). Most of these volumes are richly engraved with illustrations of the obverse and reverse of the pieces. The art and archaeology section included the most important works of the time on sculpture, gems, vases, architecture, terracottas, and some on glass. In addition, there are all the basic antiquarian books of the time such as the writings of Winckelmann, Giovanni Battista Passeri, Giuseppe Antonio Guattani, Francesco Ficoroni, Scipione Maffei, Anton Francesco Gori, Mario Guarnacci, Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, Giuseppe Micali, Francesco Inghirami, Carlo Fea, Luigi Lanzi, Giovan Battista Vermiglioli, Bernard de Montfaucon, Frédéric de Clarac, Ennio Quirino Visconti, Pietro Vitali, Eduard Gerhard, Arcangelo Michele Migliarini, Ariodante Fabretti, James Millingen, Desiré Raoul-Rochette, Achille Gennarelli, and many others.

The presence of numerous works by Luigi Canina (vendita XXI nos. 88-98), among which a ‘Rarissima opera non posta in commercio’ (vendita XXI no. 91) was probably due to the friendship of the author with Campana. Campana owned the 1843 edition of Mrs Hamilton Gray, History of Etruria (vendita VII no. 95) and several books, some very precious, on ancient Rome and its monuments, streets, fountains, and buildings, several of which were illustrated with engravings. Georg Zoëga, Gardner Wilkinson and Jean François Champollion remind us that Campana also had some Egyptian objects and mummies in his museum. Campana’s library also included several catalogues of museums and private collections, many of them illustrated, as well as the most important archaeological journals of the time such as the Bullettino, Annali and Monumenti dell’Instituto, Atti dell’Accademia Pontificia Romana, Revue archéologique,and the Bollettino Archeologico Napoletano. VI. Di miscellanee ov’è raccolto il più raro e pregevole in ogni ramo dello scibile umano This section consisted of albums on different subjects that were often illustrated. The most important part had to do with art and archaeology, but Campana’s other interests were so wide-ranging that there are also volumes on medicine, biography, politics, antiquarianism, science, religion and poetry.

Figure 6: Terni, Private collection. Stereoscopic image of Villa Campana’s back garden. The statue of Jupiter Coelimontanus is on the background. 140

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Figures 7-8-9: Luigi Gonnelli Libraio-Antiquario. Contenente una raccolta d’AUTOGRAFI provenienti da varie GIOVAN PIETRO CAMPANA. Firenze gennaio 1883.

collezioni e dalla corrispondenza del celebre archeologo

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once belonged to the de’ Medici family. The Marquis, who had bought them from Prince Del Drago Casati Gentili, pledged the codex to the Terwagne pawnshop and eventually it was sold to Sir Tom Payne, and from him it passed on to Sotheby’s. The Bullettino dell’Instituto (34, 1862, 57-58) refers to a codex that Prince Massimi had obtained from the Campana library.

The agricultural part was quite important and contained an illustrated edition of Atlas elementaire de botanique 1846 (vendita I no. 105), Statuta nobilis artis agricoltura urbis 1595 (vendita XX no. 81) to name but two. Campana was a founder member of the Institute of Agriculture (Istituto statistico agrario) and a patron of the Society of Horticulture, created after an autumn exhibition by Emilio Richter, gardener of the Villa Campana (Figure 6), and other horticulturists in Rome in 1855 (Breitfeld 2010, 249-251).

Finally, the whereabouts of another document from the antiquarian market is still unknown: a sale catalogue of Luigi Gonnelli libraio-antiquario in Florence, dated January 1883 and ‘contenente una raccolta d’AUTOGRAFI provenienti da varie collezioni e dalla corrispondenza del celebre archeologo GIOVAN PIETRO CAMPANA’ (Figure 7), where at the end is written: ‘È in vendita anche una collezione di memorie, frammenti, fogli volanti, lavori archeologici, ed altri tutti autografi del Campana’.

Within this section were several editions of the Holy Bible, among them a ‘Biblia sacra juxta con figure in legno’ (vendita XII no. 53) and a Bible that belonged to Ugo Foscolo, as well as a book on biblical archaeology. There were books on the history of pawnshops, since Campana was director of the Monte di Pietà in Rome and his grandfather had been Soprintendente alle scritture del Sacro Monte di Pietà. It is known moreover that Campana wrote a comprehensive history of institutions of this kind (Marchetti 1858, sommario, no. 45).

The letters dating from the 1840s to the 1870s offer us important information on Campana’s relationships (Figure 8). The section of diplomas (Figure 9) confirms the existence of an archive that belonged to Campana’s family, as Tito Barberi Borghini affirms in Cenni storici intorno Giovanni Antonio e Cesare Campana, illustri italiani del secolo XV (Rome 1851, 40).

There were also volumes on education and music reflecting Campana’s role as patron and treasurer of the Nursery Schools of Rome, and as a member of a delegation of the Music Society that was sent in 1847 to Pius IX, who was then in favour of creating a new music academy. Campana shared his interest in music and education with his wife Emily Rowles, to whom the musician Gennaro Gargiulio dedicated two musical scores entitled Parolina and Occhi neri. Emily Campana was appreciated in Rome because she was devoted to charity work and had opened a school for young girls. The list of books of such an amazing library provides evidence for the history of reading and collecting, and offers an image of the social role and aspirations of the owner as well as the literary fashions and the book trade of his period. When the library was put up for auction, the German Institute in Rome bought 45 of the books, all on archaeology and antiquarianism (Blanck 1979, 13). From a letter written by Henzen to Gerhard (cf. Sarti 2001, 100) it is clear that several libraries in Europe were interested in Campana’s collection: Henzen stated that he had tried to buy certain books on coins, but had been unsuccessful, while he bought other ‘good items’ for the library in Berlin. The present whereabouts of most of the books and illustrated volumes are unknown. Campana also owned important manuscripts such the famous codex of Cardinal Gentili, which contained the papers of Pope Leo X that

The sale catalogue of letters and documents held in Florence can perhaps explain the existence of three unique photographs of Campana’s sculpture museum in Rome. These were inserted into a volume on Campana’s ancient marbles by Henry d’Escamps that is currently owned by a private collector in Florence (Benucci and Sarti 2012, 4, and figs. 6-8). Florence is where Campana lived in exile and where he lost his beloved wife (Pianazza 1993), and it is also where the remnants of his huge assemblage of books, engravings, drawings, and correspondence were dispersed after his death.

Bibliography Alberi, E. 1856, Le Opere di Galileo Galilei 15. Florence, Società Editrice Fiorentina. Benucci, M. and Sarti, S. 2012. The Campana Museum of ancient marbles in nineteenth-century photographs. Journal of the History of Collections 24, 15-24. Blanck, H. 1979. Die Bibliothek des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts in Rom. Deutsche Archäologische Institut, Geschichte und Dokumente 7, Mainz, von Zabern. Breitfeld, O. 2010. Der Deutsch-Römer Emilio Richter – Kunstgärtner im Kirchenstaat, im Königreich Italien und in Hamburg. Die Gartenkunst 2, 247-264. Cappelli, G. and Salvagni, I. (eds) 2006. Frascati al tempo di Pio IX e del Marchese Campana. Rome, Campisano Editore.

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Michele Benucci and Susanna Sarti: A private library in 19th century Rome Favaro, A. 1887. Appendice Prima della Libreria di Galileo Galilei. Bullettino di Bibliografia di Storia delle Scienze matematiche e fisiche 20, 372-388. Gaultier, F. 2011. La dispersione della Collezione Campana negli anni dell’unificazione dell’Italia, in G.M. Della Fina (ed), La fortuna degli Etruschi nella costruzione dell’Italia unita. Atti del 28o Convegno internazionale di studi sulla storia e l’archeologia dell’Etruria (2010), 361-369. Annali della Fondazione per il Museo ‘Claudio Faina’ 18, Rome, Quasar. Marchetti, R. 1858. Romana di preteso peculato del Signor Marchese G.P. Campana contro il fisco. Allegazione per la seduta del 26 giugno. Rome, Tipografia tiberina. Pianazza, M. 1993. Giovan Pietro Campana, collezionista, archeologo, banchiere e il suo legame con Firenze. Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 37, 433-474. Sarti, S. 2001, Giovanni Pietro Campana (1808-1880). . Scalchi, L. 1855. Cento lavori moderni di pittura e scultura. Opera dedicata ai cultori di belle arti. Rome, Tipografia di Gaetano Chiassi.

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Fable and history: Prince Poniatowski’s Neoclassical gem collection Claudia Wagner Abstract Prince Stanislas Poniatowski (1754-1833) was one of the great collectors of his generation. His interest in the arts was nurtured during extensive travels to Europe’s centres of education, including eight months at Cambridge in 1771. Income from vast landed estates in Poland funded his collecting. The Prince settled in Rome and soon built up a gem collection rumoured to be the most significant collection of classical gems, but strictly restricted access to these treasures. First doubts about the Antiquity of the gems were raised when a selection of plaster impressions were sent to the King of Prussia and the director of the Berlin Antiquarium had a chance to examine the works. The scandal, however, was slow to break: after the Prince’s death, when the collection was sold at auction at Christie’s in 1839, investors were paying vast amounts to acquire the gems. They were indeed stunning: about 2600 gems depicting mythological subjects, illustrating Homer and Virgil, and portraits of a most comprehensive Greek and Roman catalogue known to scholars of the Classics. Keywords Poniatowski, Neoclassical, Intaglio, Gem.

Since Antiquity gems have been desired by collectors: although small in size they are high art, comparable to the best of sculpture. They depict gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines immortalised in mythology and literature, scenes from history and daily life, the famous and infamous. Inscriptions on the gems give us the names of their owners and gem-engravers. In the story of the survival of the arts in classical antiquity gems take a special place: almost all are complete and in exactly the condition in which they left the engraver’s hands, something which is true for hardly any piece of classical sculpture. The great collections of gems were formed since the Renaissance by influential families such as the Medici or the Dukes of Gonzaga, and it became more and more difficult to acquire the very best. The gems sold by the Gonzagas to the Earl of Arundel in the 16th century and were passed on as an intact collection until the Duke of Marlborough used them to ease some financial troubles. They were completely dispersed in 1899. Like many of the great collectors the Prince published a catalogue of his gems, Catalogue des pierres gravées antiques de S. A. le Prince Stanislas Poniatowski (Catalogue 1832/1857– 8), but access to the gems remained restricted and the wonder of the collection became almost mythical in character. Prince Stanislas Poniatowski had inherited a small collection of Ancient gems from his uncle, Stanislas August, last King of Poland, which were published by the renowned scholar Visconti. The prince was one of the great collectors whose expansive, almost insatiable interests in the arts were not restrained by finances: he was vastly wealthy. How could he gather more of these exquisite objects, prized by connoisseurs, scholars and students of the classics? This remained a mystery until well after the prince’s death, when his collection was sold by Christie’s at auction in 1839 (Christie’s, 29 April-May 2,1 1839). When the gems could finally be examined the truth could not be

denied any longer: they were not the work of classical but neo-classical engravers (Busiri, 1971; Seidmann 1999). This raises the all-important question: was the prince duped into buying fakes or was he himself the instigator of one of the greatest frauds perpetrated in history? Let us first examine the collection: it consists of over 2600 gems, mostly cut on orange cornelian or brown sardonyx, but also light blue chalcedony, amethyst, and, more rarely, unusual stones as beryl were used. Many are of a large ‘medallion’ size and according to the Prince’s catalogue, were mounted. The surviving original mounts are characterised by a thin line of black enamel – the gold-work shows variations of filigree, twisted and wrought shapes, often leaves. An astonishing proportion of the collection is signed with artists’ signatures, in Greek capital letters, in mirror image, so that the impression has the inscription the right way around, in relief. The names are of ancient gem engravers, passed down to us in literature, as Apollonides (Figure 1) mentioned by Pliny,1 or known from signatures on other gems, as Gnaios (Figure 2)2 but also a selection of names randomly taken from historical and mythological figures, such as Myrton (Figure 3).3 The famous sculptor was, of course, Myron, without the T. The subjects depicted fall into distinct groups: mythology, with a particular fondness for metamorphoses described by Ovid, scenes from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, from Vergil’s Aeneid, some historical events, and a large selection of portraits: a veritable illustrated who’s who of the Greek and Roman world, from artists, poets and 1 Current collection unknown; previous collections: Catalogue 1. 234; Prendeville 1841, 149; Christie’s London, April 29-May 21, 1939, lot 99. 2 Current collection: Japan, private; previous collections: 1. 326; Christie’s London, April 29-May 21, 1839, lot 1360; Prendeville 1841, 210; S.J. Phillips London, 2005, lot 22900. 3 Current collection: London, Victoria and Albert: 949-1853; previous collections: Catalogue 7. 7; Christie’s London, April 29-May 21, 1839, lot 1440; Prendeville 1841, 1083; Monson Sale, Christie’s London, 18 May, 1853, lot 216.

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Figure 1: Latona metamorphosing the Lycian peasants into frogs; signed Apollonides. Plaster impression

Figure 2: The nymphs washing the horse Arion in the Gnaios. Private collection, Japan. Amethyst intaglio.

waters of the sea; signed

Götterlehre; the references are carefully noted by the engraver on top of his drawing (Figure 4).4 The designs are not copies of other works of art, ancient or modern. The cornelian that Calandrelli engraved is now in Oxford (Figure 5) and shows Latona fleeing from the Python. No famous ancient model exists, much less for the scenes depicting metamorphoses:

Figure 3: Aeneas addressing Venus as she ascends to Libyan wood; signed Myrton. Cornelian intaglio in original setting.

heaven, after her interview with him in the

philosophers to emperors, generals, minor and major politicians. Thanks to the amazing group of sketches by the gemengraver Giovanni Calandrelli in the Antikensammlung Berlin, found and published by Gertrud Platz-Horster, we can now appreciate the design underlying the whole collection (Platz-Horster 2003; 2005). The structure of the subjects chosen is not based on primary sources but on handbooks and editions of new translations. The section on mythology illustrates Karl Philip Moritz’s

On a cornelian (Figure 6) a lovely maiden’s head has been attached to the body of a tortoise; Mercury is transforming the nymph Chelone into the reptile, her punishment for being disrespectful at the wedding of Jupiter and Juno.5 And on another cornelian (Figure 1), Latona appears again with the babies Apollo and Diana: she was thoroughly displeased when she was thirsty and the peasants refused to allow her to drink from a pond by stirring the mud at the bottom. A wonderful opportunity to attach frogs’ heads on to muscular male bodies: the peasants are transformed into frogs, punished for their inhospitality, forever doomed to swim in the murky waters of ponds and rivers. Sometimes the clues to the identification of the subject are quite subtle and it is important to be very vigilant when looking at the scenes: an amethyst shows the horse Arion being washed by nymphs (Figure 2). Clues to his identification are the human feet on the left side of his body. His parentage explains this oddity: his mother, Ceres, was pursued by Neptune and transformed herself into a horse, Neptune did the same and caught up with her. The happy result of their mating was Arion. The amethyst is now in Japan.

Calandrelli drawing, Antikensammlung Berlin: Z.II.16; Platz-Horster, 2005, 32. 5 Current collection unknown, previous collections: Prendeville 1841, 222; Catalogue 1. 342; Christie’s London, April 29-May 21,1839, lot 2410. 4

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Figure 6: Mercury changing Chelone to a tortoise; signed Dioskourides. Plaster impression.

Figure 4: Calandrelli drawing, Antikensammlung Berlin.

Figure 7: Hercules attacking the sons of Boreas; signed Kromos. Cornelian intaglio. When it comes to the lives of the heroes, in particular Hercules, the collection is as thorough in trying to depict every single pivotal scene in his life as we have come to expect. A Calandrelli design shows the young hero fighting the Nemean lion. In later life he is wearing the skin of the lion as a cap and cape, and we see him on the cornelian dealing with some villains, the sons of Boreas (Figure 7).6 But even Poniatowski seems to have set limits on grounds of taste. A drawing by Calandrelli shows Hercules pulling of the skin of the Nemean lion. This image was never executed and it is clearly understandable why not. The gems with illustrations from the Iliad and Odyssey follow the popular translations by Heinrich Voss, as recorded by Calandrelli at the top of his drawings just as with the Moritz references. His drawing and gem shows Current collection: private, Oxford; previous collections: Catalogue 2. 304; Christie’s London, April 29-May 21, 1839 (?); Prendeville 1841, 414

Figure 5: Latona being pursued by the Python; signed Diodoros. Cornelian intaglio.

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Figure 8: Achilles killing Thersites; signed Pemallios. Cornelian intaglio.

Figure 10: Byzas, founder of Byzantium; signed Byzas. Cornelian intaglio.

a divine intervention: Neptune rescuing Aeneas from Achilles (in Voss’s 1793 translation of Book 20.141). Again the subjects depict every detail of the story. The moment at which Achilles kills the Amazon Penthesileia is often depicted in art. It is a moving subject: at the moment of death Achilles falls in love. Poniatowski also has a more minor detail of the scene: Thersites thought this was hilarious and is seen here getting killed for mocking the hero (Figure 8).7 Not many great historical moments of antiquity are illustrated in the collection; a rare exception is Alexander cutting the Gordian knot (Figure 9).8 Poniatowski, however, seems to have been keen to acquire portrait heads of virtually anyone known from antiquity.

Current collection: private, Oxford; previous collections: Catalogue 5. 208; Christie’s London, April 29-May 21, 1839, lot 1734; Prendeville 1841, 977. 8 Current collection: private, Lausanne; previous collections: 8. 68; Christie’s London April 29-May 21, 1839, lot 718; Prendeville 1841, 1182; Calandrelli drawing, Antikensammlung Berlin: A.III.51; Wagner and Boardman 2003, no.662; Platz-Horster 2005, 66.

When Christie’s arranged the sale of the Poniatowski gem collection, none of the great collectors or museums seems to have shown any interest in acquiring it. It fell to a Captain John Tyrrell to buy the majority of the collection for £65,000. He thought he had landed a coup and secured a brilliant investment. He had a catalogue printed, which he later reissued illustrated with photos – one of the earliest art books to do this. After investing in the gems, he staunchly defended and publicised them. Numerous sets of impressions, in particular the first 470 gems, seem to have been made. The Oxford gem archive alone has about 5 different sets, none of them quite complete. Many of the impressions in decorative frames are Poniatowki gems

7

Current collection unknown; previous collections: Catalogue 8. 50; Christie’s London, April 29-May 21, 1839, lot 707; Christie’s London, November 7, 2006, lot 353 9

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Figure 9: Alexander cutting the Gordian knot; signed Dioskourides. Cornelian intaglio.

The portraits can be difficult to identify, mainly because they often show people never depicted in art before. Some carry an inscription: Byzaz (Figure 10),9 denotes the mythical founder of Byzantium. The philosopher in the middle is clearly identified by the tortoise in the field: yes, it is Aeschylus, who died when an eagle mistook his bald head for a stone and dropped a tortoise on it. The legions of Roman portrait heads often only have initials, such as M.T.C. – Marcus Tullius Cicero, which makes identification extremely difficult.

Claudia Wagner: Fable and history: Prince Poniatowski’s Neoclassical gem collection in Tyrrell’s collection. They were so ubiquitous, that they even spawned copies: on Ebay earrings are sold of Poniatowski’s Apollo visiting his mistress, copying the traditional Wedgwood colouring. Very soon the antiquity of the collection was questioned. Ernst Heinrich Toelken, the director of the Berlin Antiquarium, had already judged them as fakes in 1832. His principal reason was the presence of signatures of engravers known to us from the Greek and Roman world on gems of such a uniformly beautiful style. He writes with great admiration: ‘The impressions are indeed the most beautiful you can expect to see in art.’ In 1842 the collection was again attacked in the British and Foreign Review (Ogle 1842). The author finds it implausible that Poniatowski should have been able to acquire as many as 2601 previously unknown antique gems. He goes on to suggest that some Roman gem engravers, such as Giovanni Pichler, seemed to have a remarkably small number of gems attributed to them, and finds the explanation in that they had been working for the Prince. Tyrrell tried to refute these claims as puerile, and declared, that it is ‘not probable that a nobleman of his [the Prince’s] high character and honour would have asserted that which he did not believe to be true’ (British and Foreign Review 1842, 66). Tyrrell’s protestations were to no avail: at Charles Scarisbrick’s Christie’s sale in 1861, Poniatowski gems sold for as little as £2 each (Scarisbrick 1994, 20). Not everyone despised the gems: the Marquis of Breadalbane, a millionaire Scottish peer, commissioned Antoine Vechte to display his collection of 46 Poniatowski intaglios in a silver vase-candelabrum, standing six feet high (Figure 11). Vechte, acknowledged as one of the greatest art metalworkers of his generation, created a repoussé silver and damascened iron extravaganza.10 The interior was intended to be lit so that the colourful intaglios became translucent. Breadalbane had acquired a variety of the stones and sizes on offer (amethysts, orange cornelians, deep brown sardonyxes) which were arranged in a symmetrical pattern. It was finished in time for the 1862 International Exhibition and was praised as one of the great sights. The Breadalbane Vase-Candelabrum had been chosen as a centrepiece, ‘towering above its neighbours’. The Athenaeum thought the execution of the piece ‘exquisite’ throughout (Anon. 1862, 277-8). Breadalbane was a serious collector, whose collection was sold after his death by Christie’s, London on July 15, 1886. He became President of the Society of Antiquaries in 1852 and was a sometime trustee of the British Museum. Just like other gem collectors he recognized the quality of the engravers: both the gem enthusiast Rev. C.W. King, who 10

John Culme for Pash and Sons.

Figure 11: Breadalbane vase.

hat Poniatowski’s ‘Psyche opening the box of beau’, and Archibald Billing defended the quality of the work. Billing invokes the indebtedness to the Prince by modern artists ‘for showing that living artists could execute work equal to the ancients’ (Billing 1867, 116). Another intrepid collector was John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick. His collection contained over 150 gems from the Poniatowski collection, a third mounted in rings. Gems from the collection have deceived scholars for a long time: A.B. Cook believed the Io signed by Dioskourides: ‘...the loveliest of his works,... said to have been found in 1756 on the estate of the Duca di Bracciano, from whose 149

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor possession it passed into the Poniatowski collection.’ (Cook 1925, 641, fig. 438). The fabulous Getty Mark Antony, signed Gnaios, was published as ancient in the catalogue of the Ionides collection (Boardman 1968, no.18). This has been taken for granted until very recently, when the Daktyliothek Poniatowski in the Antikensammlung in Berlin became accessible and the impression was matched to the intaglio.11 It is possible to group gems together using stylistic and Morellian techniques. Many names have been suggested and must be excluded (Reinach 1895, 151). It is very unlikely that hard proof, of the kind provided by as the Calandrelli drawings, will substantiate these attributions. So far about half of all the gems are known either in impression or originals. The database of the extraordinary collection of gems commissioned by Prince Stanislas Poniatowski is available on-line. We have managed to acquire both the rare photographic catalogue, which contains small photographs of 470 pieces once in Tyrell’s collection, and a copy of Poniatowski’s own summary catalogue. Correlating Poniatowski’s own catalogue with the Christie’s sale catalogue of the collection has shown interesting clusters of omissions and additions. We have made good progress in finding more original gems and have been allowed access to some unique impressions given by Poniatowski and one of his gem engravers, Calandrelli, to the Antikensammlung, Berlin. Photographs of many of Calandrelli’s preliminary drawings can for the first time be seen side-by-side with the finished gem in the database.

Bibliography Anon. 1862. The Athenaeum, London, 30 August, 277-8. Billing, A., 1867. The science of gems, jewels, coins, and medals, ancient and modern. London, Bell & Daldy. Boardman, J. 1968. Engraved Gems in the Ionides Collection. Evanstone, Northwester University Press. Busiri Vici, A. 1971. I Poniatowski e Roma. Rome, Edam. Catalogue 1832-1857-8. Catalogue des pierre gravées antiques de S.A. le Prince Stanislas Poniatowski, 3 vols. Florence, Piatti. Cook, A.B. 1925. Zeus a Study in Ancient Religion, vol. 3, Cambridge, University Press Platz-Horster, G. 2003. ‘Zeichnungen und Gemmen des Giovanni Callandrelli’, in Willers, D. and RaselliNydegger, L. (eds.). Im Glanz der Götter und Heroen: Meisterwerke antiker Glyptik aus der Stiftung Leo Merz, 49-62. Mainz, von Zabern. Ogle 1840: N. Ogle, ‘Modern Antiques: The Poniatowski Gems’, The Spectator, 12 December 1840.

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Ogle, N. 1842. ‘The Poniatowski Collection of Antique Gems’, in The British and Foreign Review: Or, European Quarterly Journal 13, 66-91 Platz-Horster, G. 2005. L’antica maniera: Zeichnungen und Gemmen des Giovanni Calandrelli in der Antikensammlung Berlin. Cologne, DuMont. Prendeville, J. [Ed. by J. Tyrrell] 1841. Explanatory catalogue of the proof-impressions of the antique gems possessed by the late Prince Poniatowski and now in the possession of John Tyrrell, Esq: accompanied with descriptions and poetical illustrations of the subjects, and preceded by an essay on ancient gems and gemengraving / by James Prendeville, 1841. Prendeville, J. 1857. Photographic facsimiles of the antique gems formerly possessed by the late prince Poniatowski, accompanied by a description and poetical illustrations of each subject, carefully selected from classical authors, together with an essay on ancient gems and gem-engraving, by J. Prendeville, assisted by dr. Maginn. (Photogr. by G.L. Collis), 1857. Reinach, S. 1895. Pierres gravées des collections Marlborough et d’Orléans, des recueils d’Eckhel, Gori, Lévesque de Gravelle, Mariette, Millin, Stosch, Paris, Firmin-Didot et Cie. Scarisbrick, D. 1994. ‘English collectors of engraved gems: aristocrats, antiquaries and aesthetes’ in: Henig, M. et al., Classical Gems. Ancient and Modern Intaglios and Cameos in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, xiiixxiii, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Seidmann, G. 1999. ‘A Genuine Fake Poniatowski Gem?’ Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 74, 263-70. Tyrrell, J.,1842, Remarks exposing the unworthy motives and fallacious opinions of the writer of the critiques on the Poniatowski collection of gems:   Contained in the British and Foreign Review, and the Spectator, London, H. Graves & Company Wagner, C. and Boardman, J. 2003. A Collection of Classical and Eastern Intaglios, Rings and Cameos (BAR S1136). Oxford, BAR Publishing.

Platz-Horster 2005. Daktyliothek Poniatowski no.363.

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The Ancient World in the nursery: German tin figures of the 18th to 21st centuries ­­ Thomas Mannack Abstract Flat German tin figures made from the later 18th century as educational toys for the better off can be used to gauge the classical education of the upper and upper middle classes and the progress of scholarship throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Initially, ancient monuments and works of art were not widely known, and designs were often based on descriptions by ancient writers and contemporary works of art. Despite the onset of mass production in the second half of the 19th century, designers continued to increase accuracy and were stimulated by the progress of classical scholarship. The First World War put an end to mass production, and tin figures became high quality models for adult collectors, who often determined the choice of subjects. Today, tin figures are of the highest quality and designed by specialists for expert collectors and are even used in museums as educational tools. Keywords Ancient World, Enlightenment, Tin figures, Education, Reception, Toys

In the study of the reception of ancient art and history, one category of evidence has been largely ignored, namely children’s toys, particularly German flat tin figures. These were produced in huge quantities, widely distributed, dealt with many aspects of the ancient world, and were based on the latest available information at the time of production. Tin figures were made for the wealthy and better off and are therefore an accurate representation of the general knowledge of the best educated members of society. Production Flat tin figures were a largely German phenomenon (Kollbrunner 1979, 18; Hampe 1924), although there are a few such figurines which were made in Britain (Forsyth 2005, 141-160, 169-177) and elsewhere. German figures were widely exported. To the uninitiated, these toys look decidedly odd because they are as flat as cardboard cutouts. The theme of a new set of figures was decided by the owner of a workshop. He commissioned an artist to make a drawing which could be engraved into a mould. The draughtsman normally chose widely available pictures for his models which he usually found in recently published books, journals such as the London Illustrated News, and picture albums (Kaiser 1985, 10; Schwarz 2000, 16-18, Grobe 2004). The drawings were handed to skilled engravers who transferred them onto thin slabs of slate; one for the obverse and one for the reverse of the models. The castings, normally 30mm (40mm in northern Germany) high, were handed to women and children who painted the figures at home for minimal wages. Before the introduction of dedicated toy shops in the later 19th century, the finished products were sold in shops for metal household goods and general stores.

pendants representing saints – among them St. George on horseback – which were sold to pilgrims at numerous shrines as souvenirs, and from small scenes – knights fighting, dancing couples, and even castles – affixed to garments. It required little ingenuity to add a small footplate to these figures to turn them into toys. Until the 18th century, only kings could afford metal figurines: Louis XIV had an army of silver soldiers, and William I of Orange ordered tin models of the legions of Scipio and Marius as a visual aid for the reorganisation of his army (Kaiser 1985, 8). The late 18th and early 19th centuries

Origins

While we think primarily of soldiers when tin figures are mentioned, military figures were only part of the output of workshops. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the nature of toys and the lives of children were quite different from today. Children of the better off were supervised by governesses or tutors, and play time was often learning time. The Enlightenment led to a new interest in children and their education (Schraudolph 2006, 15-19). Manufacturers therefore offered a wide range of educational figurines for girls and boys, among them portrait figures of kings, the inhabitants of faraway countries, hunting scenes, acrobats, and animals. While early figures were often rather plain, a number of workshops offered superbly detailed figures based on recent scholarly publications. Thus, a group of monkeys produced by Johann Hilpert in Nürnberg in 1780 was based on scholarly illustrations published in 1775 by the natural historian Professor Johann Christian Daniel von Schreiber (Schwarz 2000, 39; Schraudolph 2006; Kollbrunner 1979, 17-19). The figures are finely detailed, and the engraver even added the creatures’ Latin names to their footplates.

From the beginning tin figures were conceived as toys. While often traced back to Roman times by enthusiasts, these models probably evolved from 13th century religious

There are only a few Greek and Roman scenes among the early examples. One of these is a group of 12 Roman gods produced by Johann Ernst Fischer in Halle around 151

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Figure 1: Roman Gods, Halle, Museum. Johann Fischer 1810. After Kaiser, fig. 3.

1810 (Schwarz 2000, 13, Figure 1). These were part of an ambitious educational project: in conjunction with the publisher F. Dreyßig, Fischer commissioned scholars at the University of Halle to write booklets on a range of subjects. These were printed by Dreyßig and packaged with specially made tin figures. The series was sold in bookshops in Halle, and later also in other German cities as Geschenk an die Jugend, “Present for children”. The author of the 1810 booklet on classical mythology accompanying the gods was Christian Buhle, professor for

natural history at Halle University, headmaster of a local grammar school, and member of the societies for hunting and forestry; apparently, Fischer could not procure a Classicist at the University of Halle. The archetypes for Fischer’s gods are difficult to trace. They are based on ancient models, post-antique and contemporary works of art, ideas gleaned from literary sources rather than ancient objects, or are complete inventions. Thus the figures provide a glimpse of the

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­­Thomas Mannack: The Ancient World in the nursery: German tin figures of the 18th to 21st centuries knowledge of a group of highly educated individuals at the beginning of the 19th century. Fischer’s Hephaistos or Vulcan making a rather modern looking helmet may have been inspired by Roman coins, since a very similar figure occurs on bronze coins struck during the rule of Antoninus Pius in Nicomedia in Bithynia, and in Lydia (Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae 4, 632.16-17). A likely source is to be found in contemporary dictionaries such as Bell’s Pantheon, where Fischer might have found the model for his Vulcan (Bell 1790, 253). An Asklepios-like figure standing at a tree trunk, around which a snake is coiled holds a scythe, a decidedly non-ancient attribute. Similar Asklepioi occur on coins and gems, and Fischer might also have used illustrations of statues in Rome or Athens such as a Romen marble statue of Asklepios in the National Museum in Athens (263, Kaltsas 2002, 343, no. 727). Bacchus lifts a golden phiale, his modesty is covered by a bundle of leaves. His white skin may indicate his rather effeminate nature, or could reflect the colour of the model for this figure, Michelangelo’s Bacchus ( Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Baldini 1982, pls. 28-30). A man wearing a blindfold and resting his right arm on an urn is probably meant to be Homer, but his dress is at best late Roman, and the book on the shelf on his left hand side is clearly modern. This figure may be evidence for the influence of contemporary sculpture, especially garden sculpture cast in lead, on the producers of tin figures. The Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe housed a statue of a similarly draped Homer, and the English sculptor John Cheere and others created numerous sculptures with ancient themes in the 18th century (Symes 1996, 51; Friedman and Clifford 1974; Neto and Grilo 2006, 5-18). Fischer’s Artemis (Figure 2) appears to have been influenced by the immensely popular Hellenistic Artemis in the Louvre, which had been presented by Pope Paul IV to Henri II of France in 1556, but a hunting dog has replaced the deer. Dogs frequently accompanied Artemis and her companions in late 17th and early 18th century sculptures such as Anselme Flamen’s Diana in the Louvre (R.F. 2971). A curious group of a naked goddess with two small sons (Figure 1.12) is taken directly from Karl Phillip Moritz’ Götterlehre, published in the late 18th century and represents Nyx with her sons Hypnos and Thanatos. Moritz’s illustration of Jupiter was also used by Fischer. Fischer’s figures were of an exceptionally high quality matched by only a few other producers. The popularity of tin figures in Germany and other European countries led to a steady increase in production, up to an estimated several million per year in the 1880s (Schraudolph 2004, 38). Stiff competition caused a decline in the quality of figures – now sold by weight – in the later 19th century. While the Napoleonic Wars, which affected all of Europe, had hardly any influence on the choice of themes, the Crimean War changed the industry completely. It coincided roughly with

Figure 2: Artemis by Johann Fischer, Halle, Museum. After Schraudolph, fig. 2. the beginning of Historicism, which established the study of history as a fully fledged and important subject. With the Crimean War, tin figures ceased to represent a wide variety of themes and became predominantly tin soldiers and thus toys for boys. The combatants of every single battle were issued as soon as possible after the event by all German manufacturers. Tin soldiers were almost as up to date as contemporary newspapers and every conflict – however small or distant – could be re-enacted in nurseries in the whole of Europe. Toy soldiers now served a new educational purpose: they were intended to prepare German boys for their future roles as soldiers. Due attention was also given to past events, which aspiring officers would later study at military academies; therefore the makers of tin soldiers issued impressive series representing Greek and Roman wars. Among the best products of the time is a series of Roman legionaries based on representations on monuments of Trajan, Marcus Aurelius and Constantine (Figure 3, Schrudolph 2006, 42). This was commissioned around 1870 by Albert Müller, a grammar school teacher in the northern town of Ploen to accompany his booklet on soldiers and equipment on Roman monuments, an enterprise reminiscent of Fischer’s project more than half 153

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Figure 3: Roman Legionaries commissioned by Albert Müller and made by Johann Ernst du Bois, around 1870. After Schraudolph, fig. 65.

Figure 4: Battle of Salamis, Heinrichsen, Nürnberg. After Sulzer, 42.

a century earlier (Schraudolph 2006, 42). Müller’s figures were made by Johann Ernst du Bois in Hannover, one of the best manufacturers in Northern Germany. In the 1880s, the ancient Greeks were represented fighting each other and in battle with Persians, and there were numerous groups involving Alexander the Great. Among these is a set issued by Heinrichsen in Nürnberg, one of the best and most innovative makers of toys, representing Alexander’s Indian campaign, including splendidly painted Indian elephants (Kollbrunner 1979, fig. 88). Boys could even command the Greek and Persian fleets at Salamis, also made by Heinrichsen (Figure 4, Sulzer 1989, 42). Classical literature was not altogether neglected: Heinrichsen issued a game containing the great heroes of the Trojan wars around the same time, including gods and Amazons, which was probably inspired by Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of Troy (Sulzer 1989, 36). The figures were largely based on late 19th century paintings and illustrations, but Artemis is the Artemis in the Louvre, now correctly depicted with a deer, not a dog. Sets portraying Roman subjects show a predilection for German schoolboys’ favourites, and the syllabus of

grammar schools: the Punic wars, fights with Germanic tribes, and Caesar’s wars. The most popular was the German folk hero Herman the Cheruscan, admired for the annihilation of three Roman legions in the Teuteburg Forest in AD 9. Heinrichsen supplied, for example, a game based on the battle, and a group depicting the suicide of Quinctilius Varus in the swamps of Germany (Sulzer 1989, 38). The firm also made a siege of Syracuse with beautifully detailed siege engines. Most of these are based on scholarly reconstructions by ancient historians of the time, and not on extant ancient depictions, although designers of the figures could now use a wealth of ancient sources (Sulzer 1989, 43; Kromayer & Veith 1928). The 20th century The First World War brought an abrupt end to the boom in the tin figure industry. Even before the slaughter in the trenches led to disillusionment with all things military, the field-grey uniforms proved to be less appealing to children than their colourful predecessors. Moreover, the makers of tin soldiers found it increasingly difficult to procure lead and tin, since all metals were urgently needed for the war effort.

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­­Thomas Mannack: The Ancient World in the nursery: German tin figures of the 18th to 21st centuries By 1920, most manufacturers had ceased to exist, but the handful of survivors was saved by a new phenomenon: the adult collector. He – collectors of tin figures are almost always male – changed the nature of tin figures drastically. Hitherto, all figures had been supplied painted, and sometimes in low quality to enable soldiers to serve in a multitude of armies and periods. The new type of customer demanded figures made to the highest standard of historical accuracy, and expected to paint the figures himself. Thus, tin-figures reliably illustrate the progress of scholarship. From the 1920s, all aspects of antiquity were covered, reflecting the interests of private individuals. Figures represent the history of antiquarianism such as Napoleon’s discoveries in Egypt, works of art, including the display of the then immensely popular Apollo of Belvedere, Greek daily life, and reconstructions of historical scenes such as the death of Caesar (Elbern and Schmuck 2002). It is thanks to a somewhat eccentric collector, Raoul Gerard Oesterreicher, that information concerning the production of tin figures between the World Wars has survived. He collected and commissioned drawings for tin figures and succeeded in recruiting professors Friedrich Krischen at the University of Danzig and Paul Couissin at the University of Marseilles as advisors (Eggimann and Krannich 2004, 1-2). Their designs were based on spectacular monuments such as the frescoes of the

Fig. 5: Aulos player after the Chigi Vase designed by Raoul Gerard Oesterreicher. After Miniaturen, no. 35.3.

Minoan palace at Knossos and the Alexander Mosaic. It is perhaps surprising that Greek figure-decorated pottery played only a minor role, although Greek vases had been published with the intention of inspiring artists since the late 18th century. Among the very few examples of motifs taken from pottery is an aulos player, and only the aulos player, who was copied from one of the most spectacular specimens, the Protocorinthian Chigi Vase (Figure 5) (Eggimann and Krannich 2004, no. 35. Boardman 1998, fig. 178.2). We might also vaguely discern the influence of vase-painting in the series representing a ‘Grecian Feast’ (Eggimann and Krannich 2004, no. 33), but the dancers are of the period. After the Second World War, a number of groups were designed and commissioned by scholars with particular historical interests. Around 1950, Professor Wolfgang Vollrath issued historical scenes including Caesar’s bridge across the Rhine (Figure 6); the reconstruction of the bridge was a scholarly passion at the time (Saatmann et al., 1939; Edwards 1985, IV.17-18). The group is delightfully detailed and includes the ram used to fix the trestles of the bridge in the bed of the Rhine, legionaries sawing trees, ox-carts, Gauls pouring earth from baskets onto the bridge, an architect and a gromatus. The bridge (the set includes several trestles) is based on Caesar’s description and the soldiers on representations on tomb stones and Trajan’s column; the latter also inspired the design of the barbarian workers. Vollrath also commissioned a scene depicting the capture of Valerian by King Shapur I (Figure 7). The event and its date, probably AD 260, is to this day the subject of learned dispute (Krannich 2003, 34-35). Vollrath’s group reveals an eclectic use of sources: monuments where possible – the central group of the aged emperor kneeling before Shapur is based on the Persian king’s rock relief at Naqshi-Rustam near Persepolis in Iran – and descriptions by ancient authors. Following the interpretation of the relief at the time, the kneeling figure is identified as Valerian (Cary & Scullard 1975, 509-510, fig. 41.6; Levit-Tawil 1992, 161-180 with fig. 3). Today it is thought that the standing figure held by the king is Valerian, while the kneeling figure represents the Roman Emperor Philip the Arab begging for peace (Cf. Bechert 1999, 211, fig. 244). The literary sources used by Vollrath are equally outdated: by 1950, the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, one or several authors who wrote a history of the Roman empire which was either hastily compiled from earlier histories or simply made up, and who were condemned by Theodor Mommsen as a ‘cloaca’ of history (Kenney 1982, 44; Mommsen 1909, 302-362), were still influential. Therefore Vollrath’s group of figures includes Cyriades, one of 30 tyrants and listed by the Scriptores as a usurper to the Roman throne, in the guise of a Roman emperor, and the king’s harem on dromedaries (Magie 1921, Valeriani Duo, IV.3-4, Tyranni Triginta, II.). The socialist government of the German Democratic Republic promoted the making of tin figures for historical 155

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Figure 6: Caesar’s bridge over the Rhine, commissioned by W. Vollrath and issued by A. Ochel.

Figure 7: The Capture of Valerian, commissioned by W. Vollrath and issued by A. Ochel. After Kieler Zinnfiguren, 34. 156

­­Thomas Mannack: The Ancient World in the nursery: German tin figures of the 18th to 21st centuries dioramas which were displayed in more than 100 Eastern German museums. Unsurprisingly, Spartacus, the enemy of slave keeping societies, was a popular choice among other heroes of the people (Kaiser). Since men were involved, there is also a large amount of nudity, which was acceptable when shown in a historical context, e.g. Odysseus surprising Nausicaa and her companions, and athletes competing in the Olympic Games. Tin figures today Today, tin figures are of the highest quality and are designed by specialists for expert collectors. They are often used in museums as educational tools, and some, such as the Rheinische Landesmuseum in Bonn, have even commissioned specific scenes to provide a context for the objects displayed in their galleries (Elbern and Schmuck 2002, Giesler 1992, 50-53). Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to Professor Pierre Briant for valuable comments on Sassanian reliefs and would like to thank Katharine Eustace for information on garden sculptures. Bibliography Baldini, U. 1982. The Complete Sculpture of Michelangelo. London, Thames and Hudson. Bechert, T. 1999. Die Provinzen des Römischen Reichs, Einführung und Überblick. Mainz, Zabern. Bell, J. 1790. Bell’s New pantheon, or, Historical dictionary of the gods, demi gods, heroes, and fabulous personages of antiquity : also, of the images and idols adored in the pagan world : together with their temples, priests, altars, oracles, fasts, festivals, games, &c. as well as descriptions of their figures, representations, and symbols, collected from statues, pictures, coins, and other remains of the ancients : the whole designed to facilitate the study of mythology, history, poetry, painting, statuary, medals, &c. &c. and compiled from the best authorities : richly embellished with characteristic prints. London, British Library. Boardman, J. 1998, Early Greek Vase Painting. London, Thames & Hudson. Cary, M. and Scullard, H, 1975. A History of Rome 3rd ed. London, Macmillan. Edwards, H. (ed.) 1985. Caesar, De bello Gallico. Harvard, University Press. Eggimann,, B. and Krannich E. 2004. Miniaturen, Kolorierte Tafeln aus dem Nachlaß von Raoul Gerard Oesterreich(er) aufbewahrt in der Bibliothèque Cantonale Universitaire Lausanne 2. Solothurn, Krannich. Elbern, S. and Schmuck, H. 2002. Antike Welten in Zinn, Ausstellung im Winckelmann-Museum vom

22. September bis 1. Dezember 2002. Stendal, Winckelmannsgesellschaft. Forsyth, H. and Egan, G. 2005. Toys, Trifles & Trinkets, Base-Metal Miniatures from London 1200 to 1800. London, Unicorn Press. Friedman, T. and Clifford, T. 1974. The man at Hyde Park Corner: sculpture by John Cheere, 1709-1787, Temple Newsam, Leeds, Stable Court Exhibition Galleries, 15 May to 15 June 1974, Marble Hill House, Twickenham, 19 July to 8 September 1974, Greater London Council. Leeds, Leeds Corporation. Gerteis, K. and Mössner, G. (eds.) 2004. 75 Jahre Deutsches Zinnfigurenmuseum, Geschichte der Zinnfigur, Geschichte mit Zinnfiguren. Kulmbach, Burgmuseum Kulmbach. Giesler, F. 1992. Römer in Zinn. Köln, Rheinlandverlag. Grobe, B. 2004. Heinrichsen Zinnfiguren und ihre Vorlagen, in Gerteis, K. and Mössner, W. (eds.), 75 Jahre Deutsches Zinnfigurenmuseum, Geschichte der Zinnfigur, Geschichte mit Zinnfiguren, 111-128. Kulmbach, Burgmuseum. Hampe, T. 1924. Der Zinnsoldat – ein deutsches Spielzeug. Berlin, Herbert Stubenrauch. Kaiser, P. 1985. Zinnfiguren, Wissenswertes zu Geschichte, Herstellung und Verwendung. Erfurt, Kulturbund. Kaltsas, N. 2002. Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. Kenney, E. (ed.) 1982. The Cambridge History of Literature 2.5 The Later Principate. Cambridge, University Press. Kollbrunner, C. 1979. Zinnfiguren, Zinnsoldaten, Zinngeschichte. Munich, Hirmer. Krannich, E. 2003. Kieler Zinnfiguren 2. Kiel, Krannich. Kromayer, J. and Veith, G. 1928. Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer. Munich, Beck. Levit-Tawil, D. 1992. The Sasanian rock relief at Darabgird—a re-evaluation. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51, 161-180. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. Magie, D. (ed.) 1921. The Scriptores Historiae Augustae. Harvard, University Press. Mommsen, T. 1909. Gesammelte Schriften VII. Berlin, Weidmann. Neto M. and Grilo, F. 2006. John Cheere’s lead garden statues workshop and the important commissions of Prince Pedro of Portugal in 1755-56. Sculpture Journal 15, 5-18. Saatmann, K., Jüngst, E. and Thielscher, P. 1939. Caesars Rheinbrücke. Bonner Jahrbücher 143, 83-208. Schraudolph, E. 2004. Zopfzeit, Befreiungskriege und Gesellschaftsgarten – Zinnfiguren zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration, in K. Gerteis and W. Mössner (eds.), 75 Jahre Deutsches Zinnfigurenmuseum, Geschichte der Zinnfigur, Geschichte mit Zinnfiguren. Kulmbach, Burgmuseum. Schraudolph, E. 2006. Eisvogel trifft Klapperschlange, Kinderbücher und Zinnfiguren in der Aufklärung. Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Schwarz et al. 2000. Paradestücke, Zinnfiguren aus Nürnberg und Fürth, Schriften des Spielzeugmuseums Nürnberg 4. Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum. 157

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor Sulzer, A. 1989. 150 Jahre feinste ZinnCompositionsfiguren Ernst Heinrichsen Nürnberg. Zurich, Zinnfigurenmuseum. Symes, M. 1996. Garden Sculpture, Shire Garden History. Princes Risborough, Shire Garden History.

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A forgotten provincial English museums initiative of the 1830s: The Midland counties Natural History Societies, their museums and libraries H.S. Torrens Abstract The invention of provincial Midlands Natural History societies and their attendant, usually county-wide, museums in the decade 1830-1840 is described. This was initiated early in 1833, by the foundation of Worcestershire’s first such society, and the slightly later publication of a paper by the physician John Conolly urging that this idea be adopted nationally, particularly by doctors. This forgotten initiative came after the Philosophical Movement, which had previously produced Literary and Philosophical, or soon Scientific, Institutions, and was to continue to do so in places like Hereford and Leicester. This was later followed by the Field Clubs, which only arrived when railway systems developed. The spread of this Natural History initiative in Midland counties, between Worcestershire and Shropshire in the west and Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in the east is described, but further research may reveal it was more widespread in its influence. The museological consequences, at least for the development of provincial museums in England, were significant. Keywords Natural History societies, museums, libraries, English Midlands, Worcestershire, Ludlow, Shropshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Herefordshire, Leicester, John Conolly.

An earlier paper reviewed how Natural History, across its wide range, had been received in Britain’s eighteenth century museums. It noted the largely laissez-faire attitude to many collections then. Such collections had been slowly and carefully built up, but were then all too often suddenly and fatally dispersed, mostly by lottery or auction. That paper ended by noting the truly remarkable change in attitudes which occurred in the next 50 years. By 1851, ‘collectors and museums, [which had been] almost universally laughed at in 1800’, had been brought together, ‘with a view to the assistance which may be obtained from them in the study of nature’ (Torrens 2003, 87). Today, after celebrations of the Geological Society of London’s bicentenary in 2007, we can see how particular stimuli for such a newly scientific and specialised Society arose. They came from a variety of organisations and activities, often well outside London, in particular: a) the locations of British universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh), b) mining activity in particular areas (Cornwall: metals; Newcastle: coal; Swansea: copper smelting) and c) the pioneering geological work of William Smith (1769-1839) around Bath and Bristol. This is best demonstrated on the map showing the distribution of early Honorary Members of the Geological Society (i.e. those who lived outside London: Rudwick 1963, 330). Knell has since described how provincial geological collecting developed in the next period, from 1815 (after William Smith’s geological map: Wigley et al. 2007) to 1851 (the Great Exhibition), with a particular emphasis on Yorkshire. A specialist Museum was built in Scarborough in 1828-1829 to pay museological tribute to Smith. This was the Rotunda, whose re-opening, as The William Smith

Museum of Geology, was also celebrated in 2007. But the idea of restoring this pioneering Museum to its original purpose was not new. It had been proposed in 1951 by the Marxist historian Francis Klingender (1907-1955), author of Art and the Industrial Revolution (Klingender 1947, dedicated to the North Staffordshire Workers Educational Association). Klingender demanded that this Museum be re-opened as a memorial to ‘Smith and the Philosophical Movement’ (Klingender 1951). But his idea was ignored, both by contemporaries and historians. The Natural History societies’ initiative, discussed here, was certainly not ignored by its contemporaries, but it has been by historians. The Philosophical Society Movement Knell paid particular attention to the Philosophical Society Movement which inspired the Scarborough Philosophical Society, founded in 1827 and which created the Rotunda Museum. Knell mapped ‘some Philosophical and Natural History Societies [actually those most active] in the 1820’s’ (Knell 2000, 51). But 25 of these were Philosophical and only three were specifically Natural Historical and were based in towns or cities. These provincial Philosophical Societies had not started in the industrial North, as is often claimed (e.g. by L.C. Miall [1845-1921] in Clark 1924, 145), but had had earlier eighteenth century origins, from East Midlands Societies such as the Gentlemen’s Societies, at Spalding from 1710 (Winter 1950) or Peterborough from 1730 (Dack 1899; Winter 1939), whose context has been well explored by Arthur MacGregor, whom we honour here (MacGregor 2007, 52-54). Later on there were others; the first of four separate Bath Philosophical Societies was founded in 1779, and one survives in resurrected form (Torrens 1990).

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor The History of Natural History in Britain Allen (1994) has discussed the historical development of Natural History in Britain. In an earlier paper he specifically discussed the development of Natural History Societies (Allen 1987, reprinted in Allen 2001, Chapter 15). He noted how by the end of the 18th century, ‘the main provincial cities had begun to acquire one by one a type of learned body which aspired to be a kind of national academy in miniature. This was the literary and philosophical society’ (hereafter LPS). Some of the later of these sanctioned a change from ‘Philosophical’ to ‘Scientific’, as at Bath in 1823 (Torrens 2005) and, as we shall see, the one that was rejuvenated at Worcester in 1829 (Jones 1980, 14). Allen noted how these Societies had decided that they must build themselves suitably imposing edifices, variously titled ‘institutes’, in which it was judged appropriate that there should be not only a lecture-hall and a library, but also a collection of natural ‘curiosities’ and antiquities, more particularly illustrative of the neighbourhood.... Indeed so central to its needs was the formation of a museum considered to be that in one or two places, for example Torquay [but this refers to a later Natural History Society formed in 1844. Its most recent historian claims that its primary initial object was to purchase books on natural history, and that its Museum was not built until 1876 (Walker 1969, 3 and 10)] and Newcastle [a city which had both a LPS, founded 1793 (Watson 1897), and an early Natural History Society (Goddard 1929)], it was the building that materialised first and the natural history society that accreted around it subsequently. By the 1830s, when this was beginning to happen, the ‘literary and philosophical’ ambience was either dying or already dead [which is not entirely true either, as we shall see]. The imprisonment in a harmfully irrelevant magnificence was decisively brought to a stop by the invention of the field club. This took place in Berwickshire as early as 1831, but it was not until the 1840s and 1850s that its impact began to be felt [pp. 246-247]. This history ignores the separate invention in the 1830s of county Natural History societies (hereafter NHS), in the period between these LPSs and the Field Clubs (hereafter FCs); the topic of this paper. Later authors, urging the further formation of provincial museums half a century later, like the Hertfordshire piano-manufacturer and naturalist, John Hopkinson (1844-1919; Anon. 1919), seem to have remained similarly ignorant of these earlier attempts. Hopkinson had founded a Watford NHS in 1875, which became the Hertfordshire NHS and FC in 1879, and later their County Museum was built in 1898. In 1881 he published a significant paper urging the formation of English provincial museums (Hopkinson 1881), but he made no mention of this earlier, forgotten, 1830s initiative, which had started in the West Midlands. He only cited more recent literature from 1853 onwards.

Another reason why this NHS initiative has been ignored is the monolithic, vertical, nature of much museological history. We may cite studies of the Ludlow Museum (Lloyd 1983) or the Leicester LPS (Boylan 2010) which both study their histories at specific locations, and then fail to put them into any contemporary context. The pre-1830s Natural History Societies The three earlier NHS mentioned by Knell were all based in cities or large towns. These were: 1) Manchester NHS (formed 30 June 1821; Nicholson 1915). This was a society whose Museum was not open to non-members until 1838 (Secord 1994, 399), 2) the NHS of Northumberland and Durham, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (formed 1829, Goddard 1929) whose Museum was built to house an existing collection and was by contrast open to townsmen (Gray 1836), and 3) the Ashmolean NHS in Oxford (1828), of which Society, and its rival Oxford Botanical and NHS (1832), one would like to know more (see MacGregor and Headon 2000). The societies, and their museums, in Manchester and Newcastle, as well as the LPS Museum at Sheffield (1822), have been studied by Alberti (2002). Clearly there was not yet any national movement to establish county-wide NHSs. In 1836 J.E. Gray could only list two other NHS Museums in England, one, at an institution again in the major city of Liverpool, founded on 12 September 1836 (Ormerod 1954, 35-41 and Tresise and Sarjeant 1997, 11-28). This used the Royal Institution premises there, opened in 1820, but its Museum only had a short separate existence until 1844. The other was that newly opened in the capital city of Worcestershire (Gray 1836). English County Natural History Societies and Museums The situation was changed in the early 1830’s, by this Worcestershire example. In 1867 the antiquary Thomas Wright (1810-1877), educated at Ludlow Grammar School from 1827, and later historian of that town could write well after the English innovations of both NHSs and FCs: Perhaps some of my readers will hardly know what a Field Club is, although during the last few years, this sort of society has become very fashionable in some parts of our island. [But separate] Natural History Societies have existed long in almost every country town, and they have established museums, and, from time to time, listened to lectures; but the Field Club [now] presents a different and a pleasanter method of studying science (Wright 1867, 74). This ‘pleasanter’ view was confirmed by the popularity of the new FCs, although La Touche (1878) soon urged that such FCs should strive for less pleasure, and be more ‘modest, practical and definite’ in their objectives. Probably it was the popularity of such FC excursions (captured on

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H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative a DVD re-enactment of a Victorian excursion, produced by the Woolhope FC of Herefordshire; Olver 2009) which was later to consign these earlier county NHSs to historical oblivion of the kind discussed here. But those in the West Midlands played a significant role in helping the epochmaking geological activities of Roderick Murchison in the 1830s. They were in turn encouraged by his support, especially after his Silurian System was published in 1839 (Bassett 1991).

Association for the Advancement of Science (hereafter BAAS) in 1831 (Morrell and Thackray 1981). Worcester had also provided the origin of, and a first home for, the equally itinerant PMSA as cholera struck Worcester (McMenemey 1947 and 1959). This organisation gave new expression to provincial medical opinion (Porter 1997, 354), giving rise to today’s influential British Medical Association. The provinces were now clearly asserting their intellectual independence from the capital.

The Worcestershire Natural History Society

All this has later confused some into crediting Charles Hastings (1794-1866), the Worcestershire doctor and founder of the PMSA, with also having alone founded the WNHS, in which he undoubtedly played a vital and long continuing role by encouraging it to flourish. He certainly took a real interest in natural history and was elected Fellow of the Geological Society (hereafter FGS) on 3 December 1834. His claim to be ‘founder’ was first aired in 1882 (Anon. 1882a, 5), but this was soon refuted, first by ‘A Freeman’ (WJ, 19 August 1882, 5) and then by F[rederick] N[icholson] G[osling] (1811-1884) who had previously been printer and proprietor of the Worcester Journal (WJ, 26 August 1882, 4).

The first of the new county-wide NHSs was founded in Worcester, on 8 April 1833. It was first announced on 3 April 1833 (Worcester Journal - hereafter WJ, 4 April 1833, 3, col. 6). Three Vigornian non-medical founders, clearly stimulated by the example of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association (hereafter PMSA), founded in Worcester on 19 July 1832, had inspired this. Crucially, Worcester already had a separate Literary and Scientific Institution (LSI), rejuvenated in 1829 (Jones 1980, 14), under the presidency of the surgeon and apothecary Christopher Henry Hebb (1771-1861; Anon. 1861). This Institution seems to have had its first origins as a book collecting LPS in 1820 (whose printed Rules and Regulations for the following year survive in the Prattinton Collection, Society of Antiquaries, London, III XII/5). Details of the WLSI come from its first Minute Book, January 1829 to August 1851. This was rediscovered in the library of the Worcestershire antiquary John William Willis-Bund (1843-1928; Times, 9 January 1928, 19). It was sold at auction in 2009, and purchased by the Worcestershire Record Office. The WLSI from 8 April 1834 (WJ, 3 April 1834, 1) occupied a new building called the Athenaeum in Foregate street (WJ, 5 September 1833 and 16 January 1834), and flourished until at least 1850, when it awarded prizes for essays to help improve the working classes (Torrens 2010). These advanced the careers of both Birmingham’s John Alfred Langford (1823-1903; see ODNB) and Shropshire’s John Randall (1810-1910; Randall 1882, 447 [but who there confused the WNHS with this WLSI]). Certainly neither the WLSI nor the WNHS, which soon followed, ever suffered the short-lived ‘demises’ claimed for them by Allen (1983). The WLSI was finally dissolved in June 1853 (WJ, 16 June 1853, p. 1) after their landlord at the Athenaeum, the local MP William Laslett (18011884), frustrated by his unpaid demands for rent (WJ, 24 March 1853), had suddenly distrained all WLSI property in his building and auctioned it off (WJ, 21 October 1852, 1 and see ‘Jottings’ in WJ, 2 February 1889, 5). The previous decade 1830-1840 had been one of great significance in British history, with the passing of the Reform Acts (Hilton 2006, 420-437). The medical profession in England was particularly riven by this, as Adrian Desmond’s book on metropolitan medicine has shown (Desmond 1989); as was science, which had just founded its itinerant, and newly provincial, British

The Worcestershire Natural History Society Founders The botanist Edwin Lees (1800-1887) was one of the three real WNHS founders. In a letter dated 31 August 1882 (Lees 1882) he wrote how ‘the three persons who commenced the [NHS] were Mr. John Evans, Mr. William Holl, a proprietor of the Worcester Herald and myself’. This Lees confirmed in print (WJ, 2 September 1882, 5) to allow the erroneous claim for Hastings to be corrected in the second edition of the Worcestershire Exhibition Catalogue (Anon. 1882b). The true facts had already been carefully set out in a book by Charles Mortimer Downes (1850-1889): We believe the need of such a Society was first suggested by Mr. W. Holl, the father of a citizen still with us [Harvey Buchanan Holl (1820-1886) who became a noted geologist], Mr. John Evans, a chemist, of Broad Street, whose services as Treasurer and Secretary of the Society were remembered with gratitude at many of its yearly meetings; and Mr. Edwin Lees, whose enthusiasm for Natural History has known no ‘shadow of turning’ - perhaps indeed,... has only increased... and who has lived to see the Museum of which he was first Curator, pass through many phases and vicissitudes, to be at length [1881] resuscitated under the auspices of a public body (Downes 1881, 65). There were however clear tensions between this new Worcester society and the existing PMSA and WLSI. The newly found prestige of the doctors in Worcester meant that when the WNHS’s first book Illustrations of the Natural History of Worcestershire came to be published in 1834, Hastings was given as its sole author. Lees (in his annotated copy in Worcester Archaeological Society’s Library) claimed it should have been credited to their joint 161

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor authorship. Certainly when the second volume of the PMSA Transactions was published in 1834, it included a flyer for these soon-to-be-published Illustrations, another for an already published WNHS lecture by Lees (Lees 1834), as well as one for a new, soon-to-appear, Worcester periodical The Analyst, dated 22 May 1834 (copies in author’s collection). Edwin Lees soon confirmed how ‘in Worcester all our literary and scientific societies are somewhat faulty - Politics in one, jealousy and monopoly in another, and a true scientific spirit absent from all’ (Lees 1837). Lees’ annotations also add that a later WNHS president Dr Robert Streeten was ‘hasty, passionate and jealous and by unfairly and unkindly opposing me in the Council of the WNHS, forced me to quit it’. This must have been during Streeten’s second presidency, 1837-1838.

We need first to look at these three WNHS founders. 1) Edwin Lees (1800-1887) was a Worcester printer. Elected FLS in 1835, he had helped to revive the separate, and clearly to some extent rival, Worcester LSI in January 1829, whose first meeting he called. Lees was also then Honorary Secretary of the Worcestershire Horticultural Society. He was first Curator of the WNHS collections, gathered together in their fine new Museum opened in September 1836, as well as the author of their first printed lecture, given on 26 November 1833 (Lees 1834), which already included lists of members (115-119) and of donations, whether of money, books or specimens (119122). Lees’ work on botany, alone of the three founders, ensures his ODNB entry. This, with the book by Jones

Figure 1: The wood engraving, in its first state, of John Evans’ ‘new Encrinite’. This was sent to William Buckland at Oxford on 23 September 1836 (author’s collection; the version listed by Thackray 1985, no. 23 is a later version dated 1841-1842). species of

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H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative (1980), means he is adequately known. But Jones’ title, The Lookers Out of Worcestershire, only highlights the historical problems discussed here; her ‘Lookers Out’ are those of the later FCs (of which a Worcestershire one was founded in 1847); Lees had earlier also been one of the founders of the wholly forgotten ‘Lookers In’, the earlier Museum builders of the NHSs. The two other WNHS founders are by contrast completely forgotten. 2) John Evans (1804-1859) was a chemist and druggist of Broad Street, Worcester. Born in 1804 at Leominster, he married Elizabeth Marston (1795-1882) from Hopesay, Shropshire at Ludlow on 16 January 1827 (International

Genealogical Index - hereafter IGI). He settled at Worcester, where their two daughters were born 1827-1830. He had also been the joint Hon. Sec. (with Lees) of the earlier Worcester Horticultural Society 1829 (founded 1828) and he was soon a contributor on Shropshire birds and fossil trilobites to the Magazine of Natural History 1830-1833, which had by then become the metropolitan mouthpiece for provincial natural historians all over England, until it was subsumed, in July 1840, into the Annals [later and Magazine] of Natural History (on the publishing history of both see Sheets-Pyenson 1981). As well as Evans’ contributions to this magazine, he had issued from September 1836 fine wood engravings of choice fossil specimens in his own collection. The

Figure 2: The first page of William Holl’s first Prospectus.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor illustration of his ‘new species of Encrinite in the cabinet of John Evans, Hon. Secretary of the Worcestershire Natural History Society: discovered... in the Summer of 1835’ was sent on 23 September 1836 to William Buckland at Oxford (the original, and its covering letter, are in the author’s collection). Four later versions, which Evans presented to the Geological Society in February 1842, are listed by Thackray (1985, 187). These were now ‘in the cabinet of John Evans, FSA, Grove House, Worcester’, which date them as after June 1841, when Evans was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Evans was the WNHS’s dutiful, and hard-working, Hon. Sec. from its inception, as well as its Treasurer, and a donor to its collections before and after his sad death. Late in 1842, after his last natural history publication, dated 8 August 1842, had appeared (in Phytologist, 1, 331, 1844), he moved to London to become Managing Director of the UK Cattle Insurance Company. Here he was listed as a Member of the new Palaeontographical Society in 1848 (1848 Members List). But he soon got into debt, circa 1849, and now moved to Leamington Spa, where he was listed as ‘Inspector of Nuisances’ in the 1851 Census. Here he committed suicide on 8 April 1859 (Royal Leamington Spa Chronicle, 16 April 1859, 1 and 4, col. 7). 3) William Holl (1795-1870) was another Worcester printer, who has been misidentified with a homonymous London engraver, the junior one in ODNB, by McOuat (1996, 489) and others. Our Holl’s father was Thomas Augustine Holl (1753-1819), who came from Norwich. He moved to Worcester, where he was first an apprenticed printer, and where he started the new, liberal, newspaper The Worcester Herald from 4 January 1794 (Cooper 1997). His sons Charles Armstrong Holl (1785-1852) and our William Holl then took over his Worcester printing business in June 1819. In December 1819, William Holl married Charlotte Gedge from another family of printers and publishers in Bury St Edmunds. Her editor uncle had there started, in 1782, the Bury and Norwich Post (Gentleman’s Magazine, 89 (2), 635, 1819). William and Charlotte had two sons, one of whom, the surgeon Harvey Buchanan Holl (1820-1886), had been one of the earliest professional geologists in the USA (between 1838 and 1842) and who then returned to practice medicine in England, while continuing his geological work here, particularly on the Malverns. His father William Holl was on the first WNHS Council, and on its Zoology and Entomology committees. Holl and The Analyst (the Midland Counties Science Periodical) Holl was planning a new periodical, ‘to supply the Midland Counties’, by 5 April 1834, when he wrote at length about it to Hugh Strickland (Rookmaaker 2010, 108). His letter was endorsed by Charles Hastings, ‘anxious that Mr. Holl’s undertaking should succeed’, to further emphasise

its Worcester origins. Early in May 1834, Holl issued a first prospectus for his new Journal of Literature, Science and the Arts, from his newspaper office in Worcester. This he then intended should be called the Midland Counties’ Magazine (copy, 10 May 1834, Dovaston papers, 1662/2/2174, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury), but later that month its title was changed to The Analyst, as it was now thought the earlier, provincial, title would deter sales. This periodical reached a total of ten volumes between 1834 and 1840. The Analyst was initially a monthly Journal of Literature, Science, and the Arts. It was the pioneering English provincial periodical, to have had a special emphasis on science and natural history. It has been strangely neglected by historians, who have concentrated on those published in London (Sheets-Pyenson 1985). Allen however (2001, IX, 113 and 123) has rightly noted how unusual such a provincial production was, as well as how catholic its contents were. The editor of the first 5 volumes, 1-2 printed in Worcester, 3-5 in Birmingham, has not hitherto been identified. But he was in fact revealed at the Dinner celebrating the laying of the first stone of the new Worcestershire Museum on 25 May 1835 (WH, 30 May 1835, 4, cols. 1-4). A toast was then raised to ‘the editor of The Analyst’ to thank him for ‘his exertions on behalf of the Worcestershire NHS in giving publicity to their proceedings’. To this William Holl replied, thanking them ‘for their notice of his humble efforts in the crusade of science’ (Anon. 1835, 41). In 1835 Holl moved to Edgbaston, near Birmingham and was elected FGS, on 11 May 1836, sponsored by John Murray (1786-1851) the itinerant science lecturer (ODNB) and the physicians Charles Hastings, and Thomas Du Gard of Shrewsbury (for whom see below). By June 1837, Holl had moved to Pall Mall, London, where he was one of the joint secretaries of the new Ornithological Society of London (Rookmaaker 2010, 184). Holl returned to Worcester after 1849, where he died on 17 February 1870 (WJ, 19 February, 5, col. 3 and WH, 19 February 1870, 4-5). The Analyst initially appeared monthly (volume 1 from July 1834 to January 1835; 2 from February 1835 to July 1835); then, after Holl’s move to Birmingham, quarterly (3 from October 1835 to January 1836; 4; 1836, 5; 1836). The pseudonymous ornithologist ‘S.D. Wood’ (Mathews 1938; McOuat 1996) had announced in 1835, that ‘The Analyst will in future be conducted in Birmingham instead of Worcester, the latter town having seemingly not yet risen sufficiently in the intellectual rank to support such an undertaking’ (W[ood] 1835), clearly more evidence of local friction within Worcester society and Societies. From volume 6, 1837, Holl was joined as co-editor by Neville Wood (1818-1886 - Lancet, 3 April 1886, 668). Wood had written several ornithological books (Mullins and Swann 1917, 663-664) and he also took over the editorship of volumes for 1837-1839 of The Naturalist, another periodical which Holl had started with Benjamin Maund (1790-1864) FLS 1827, the Worcestershire 164

H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative

Figure 3: Front view of the new Worcestershire Museum (from Hastings 1835). horticulturalist, in 1836 (Magazine of Natural History, 9, 392, 1836; NS 1, 263, 1837 and ODNB s.n. Maund). The physician John Conolly (see below) paid particular tribute to the Worcester origins of these ‘very useful works’ in 1836 (Analyst 5, 309). Finally, as we shall see, the remarkable, blind, Edward Mammatt (1807-1860), from Leicester joined them as The Analyst’s co-editor from volume 7 (1837) and he then became the sole editor for volumes 8-10 (1838-1840). Worcestershire Natural History Society Museum and Publications The Worcestershire NHS initially went from strength to strength and built their fine Worcestershire Museum, opened on 15 September 1836 (Hastings 1837). This was designed by the Birmingham architects, Frederick William Fiddian (1810-1888; Birmingham Daily Post, 29 October 1888) and Isaac Newey (c.1810-1861; see Colvin 1995, 699).

A later photograph of the entrance to this building, demolished in 1939 for a cinema, was reproduced by Gwilliam (1993, 71). The WNHS also published a long series of Addresses, at first annually, then more irregularly, until at least 1866, but which today are excessively rare. Those issued in the first few years, to 1840 are: 1) 1833, Anon. Report of the Committee at the first quarterly meeting, 2 July 1833 (pp. 10) 2) 1834, Address of the Council on 16 May 1835 by Robert J.N. Streeten [1800-1849, MD Edinburgh 1824, botanist and editor of PMSA Transactions, see Medical Directory 1850, 470], in two issues (pp. [38]) 3) 1835, Proceedings of the Second Anniversary Festival with the Address of the Council [year ending 25 March 165

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor 1835] by Charles Hastings [see McMenemey 1959] (pp. 40) with 4) 1835, Anon. Particulars of Festival... and Ceremony of laying the first stone of the Worcestershire Museum [on 25 May 1835] (pp. 64) 5) 1836, Proceedings of the Third Anniversary Meeting with Address of the Council by J[ohn] H[enry] Walsh [1810-1888 - Worcester surgeon, later famous as a writer on field sports, see ODNB] (pp. 59). 6) 1837, Address... to the WNHS on the opening of the Worcestershire Museum, 15 September 1836 by Charles Hastings (pp. 57) 7) 1837, Address of the Council of the WNHS at the Fourth Anniversary Meeting by Hugh E. Strickland [1811-1853, Worcestershire-based geologist and ornithologist; see ODNB] (pp. 43). 8) 1838, Address of the Council of the WNHS at the Fifth Anniversary Meeting by Robert J.N. Streeten (pp. 38) 9) 1839, Address of the Council of the WNHS at the Sixth Anniversary Meeting by Rev. John Pearson [1804-1882, rector of Suckley, Worcestershire, see Pearson 1893, 4-8] (pp. 34) 10) 1840, Address of the Council of the WNHS at the Seventh Anniversary Meeting by Jonas Malden [17921860, MD Edinburgh 1814, Worcester physician; see Cheltenham Looker-On, 7 April 1860, 219] (pp. 32). 11) 1840, Catalogue of the Books in the Library of the WNHS, August 1840 compiled by H.E. Strickland (pp. 16) with a supplement (pp. 27-30) added to the Address of the Council... at the Eighth Anniversary Meeting, by Charles Hastings, 1841. The seventh item, by the ill-fated Worcestershire naturalist Hugh Edwin Strickland, is particularly scarce and only two copies are known in public hands (Worcester Library and the Geological Society of London Library). Strickland became famous in both ornithological and geological circles. His collections and archives were bequeathed after his tragic death to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, but were then withdrawn and passed instead to Cambridge University (MacGregor 2001, 144). His fine archive there, recently catalogued by Rookmaaker (2010), gives the best indication of the wealth and depth of his Worcestershire activities before his untimely death in a railway accident. All the early transactions, and details of all papers presented to the WNHS, are also recorded in a large folio manuscript volume, seen earlier in Worcester Local Studies library (press mark LF 506). This gave full details of Society business from 1833 to 1837. In July 1836 the WNHS had their petition presented to Parliament by the local MP George Richard Robinson (c.1781-1850). This asked that ‘duplicates of objects of natural history, coins etc, which

were in the British Museum [which had recently been examined by a Select Committee], might be distributed amongst such societies throughout the country’ (Times, 28 July 1836, 3). The WNHS were soon afterwards joined in the same petition by the new Nottinghamshire Society (see below; Times, 30 July 1836, 4). The WNHS was still pursuing this possibility in April 1845 (McOuat 1996, 500), after the passing of the ‘Act for encouraging the establishment of Museums in large Towns’ (Act 1845). These initiatives must have been connected in some way with the Sheffield MP, James Silk Buckingham’s (1786-1855) Public Institutions Bill of 1835 (see below), ‘to embrace the means of diffusing Literary and Scientific Information, and forming Libraries and Museums in all Towns’ (Kelly 1973, 6-8, 432). This Bill may have been stimulated by the move to create the Countywide NHS and Museums discussed here. The WNHS seems finally to have run out of steam only in the 1860s, as with so many such societies in laissezfaire England; but despite this 30 years record, it gets no mention in the Worcestershire chapter of Currie and Lewis (1994, 434). By 1863 we find the WNHS Museum being ominously used as an auction room for natural history especially ornithological, specimens (Anon. 1863). John Conolly’s County Natural History Societies Initiative On 15 June 1833, a first notice of the publication by the physician John Conolly (1794-1866) appeared in the London Medical Gazette (12, 362-364). This reviewed the first annual volume, ‘just published’ of the PMSA Transactions, in which it had appeared (1, 180-218). Conolly’s proposal was ‘the most promising yet devised for tasking the usefulness’ of this new [PMSA] Association’. Conolly was then living in Warwick, after a disastrous period as professor of the Nature and Treatment of Diseases at London University and was deep in debt. This 1833 paper, by ‘J. Conolly, MD, Warwick, late professor of the Practice of Medicine at the London University’, was entitled ‘A Proposal to establish County Natural History Societies, for ascertaining the Circumstances, in all Localities, which are productive of Disease or Conducive to Health’. Separate copies were also printed, with a new title page (copy in British Library, press mark 7306.b.19). The Medical Gazette’s review was copied in WJ (27 June), and WH (Holl’s own paper), 29 June). The more reactionary The Lancet (6 July 1833, 2, 465-466) gave it less notice, recording of Conolly’s paper, how ‘the ex-professor would also bring [his paper] formally before the [PMSA] at the July meeting’ at Bristol, on 19 July 1833. Conolly’s offprint was also reviewed at length in the Magazine of Natural History (6, 428-430, September 1833), which wished it ‘good luck’, but doubted how many would answer his call. Late in 1836 The Analyst (5, 307311) reported Conolly’s own lecture, on 4 October 1836, to the WNHS in their new Museum, about his proposal. Conolly’s proposal thus clearly appeared after the foundation of the WNHS. Conolly’s initiative had been inspired by the WNHS, and not vice versa, although 166

H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative several have assumed it must have appeared first, as did F[rederick] N[icholson] G[osling] (WJ, 26 August 1882, 4). But long reports of the foundation meeting of the PMSA, in July 1832, at which Conolly was present (WH, 20 July, 3, col. 3; WJ, 26 July 1832, 4, cols. 1-2) make no mention of his having there read any such paper. Conolly’s supposed role at Worcester has since been further confused by McOuat (1996, 488), who wrongly credited him with having written the 1833 Report of the WNHS Committee (Anon. 1833), in which he had played no part. Conolly himself confirmed how ‘as far as Worcestershire was concerned, there was [already] a design of forming a society of that [NHS] nature at the time he mentioned to Dr. Hastings the desire he had to write a paper on the subject for the Medical Journal [PMSA Transactions]’ (Anon. 1835, 29). But it is also clear that Conolly’s near-simultaneous production much helped stimulate the whole County NHS idea, first throughout Worcestershire, and then more widely. Conolly’s paper had noted how: country practitioners [like himself] have intimate acquaintance with a certain limited locality and can hardly fail to learn truths which, by teaching the prevention of some of the most destructive and least controllable diseases, would augment the happiness, wisdom and power of man. During the recent cholera outbreaks, Conolly had kept 1) weather records, with 2) other records of epidemics, plotted against the locations of houses, 3) noted that this epidemic had been preceded by a widespread, severe influenza, and in particular 4) that Coventry had escaped with relative immunity as had Evesham and Cheltenham. Conolly thought that such medical topographical ‘studies might be said to be a branch of natural history’, and urged that NHSs be formed in each county in England, which might be promoted through Local Committees of the PMSA. He further suggested such work might be then divided into sections, specialising in a) Statistics, b) Geology and Mineralogy, c) Geography, d) Meteorology, e) Agriculture, which might include Ornithology and Ichthyology, f) Botany, g) Archaeology, h) Chemistry, i) Medical Topography and Statistics, where negative evidence on epidemics would be useful. He suggested that all this should be recorded, perhaps in annual publications like the Annuaires of French Départements. Finally Conolly thought one further advantage should be the concentration in County Museums of all the valuable natural history collections which had already been made. He thought the establishment of these Societies would mainly depend on the medical profession and noted ‘that some of these subjects were introduced to the consideration of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge [hereafter SDUK], when I was a member of the London Committee’. In a letter to Thomas Coates of the SDUK, dated 15 May 1834 (University College London, SDUK

Archives) Connolly noted of his own 1833 County NHS paper how: yet for 12 months past, I have written little... a paper on Natural History Societies which has stirred up all Worcestershire.. [adding in a postscript] the paper on Natural History Societies is one which I have much wished to be seen by some of the [SDUK] Committee. There is a great desire for them in the country, and [this] our Local Committees may, as I have said therein, much aid and assist. Another initiative, which came directly from Conolly, was his suggestion that such Medical Topographical studies should be published by doctors, in the Transactions of the PMSA. These regional natural history studies soon became a feature of their volumes, although now forgotten, having escaped listing in major bibliographies such as the Royal Society’s Catalogues of Scientific Papers. Examples are those on 1) the Cornish Hundred of Penwith (Land’s End) by Conolly’s friend, John Forbes (1787-1861 - ODNB) in volume 2, 32-131 etc, 1834, or 2) that on Bristol by Andrew Carrick (1767-1837) and John Addington Symonds (1807-1871; ODNB) in volume 2, 148-180, 1834; or 3) the important ‘Medico-Topographical, Geological and Statistical Sketch of Bolton’ by James Black (1788/9-1867; ODNB) in volume 5, 125-224, 1837, or 4) the fine study of the Shrewsbury area by Thomas Ogier Ward (1803-1879; Times, 27 March 1879, p. 1, col. 1) in volume 9, 1-102 (as an offprint), 1841. The Ludlow Natural History Society Conolly was then based in Warwick, but the next NHS and Museum to be founded was that at Ludlow on 12 October 1833, which has had its own fine historian (Lloyd 1983). Ludlow is a town in southern Shropshire. Its NHS can never claim to have been a county matter, but this town too founded a Museum which still survives and which has safeguarded much vital material, especially palaeontological, under the influence of two early members, the physician Thomas Lloyd (1802-1849) of Ludlow, and the Anglican clergyman Rev. Thomas Taylor Lewis (1801-1858) of Aymestrey. The initial impetus for this foundation came direct from Worcestershire. On 16 January 1827, John Evans, the WNHS founder, had married at Ludlow Elizabeth (1795-1882), daughter of John Marston (1757-1831; Burke, Landed Gentry, 1952, 1713). Her brother was the Hopesay-born Richard Marston (1792-1866), a founder member of Ludlow’s NHS, who was, like Evans, a chemist and druggist, in Broad Street, Ludlow. Marston was one of the seven men who had inaugurated the Ludlow NHS on 12 October 1833 (Lloyd 1983, 5). The close connections between these two families continued into a second generation when, on 16 September 1851, John and Elizabeth Evans’ daughter, Frances Elizabeth Evans 167

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor (1827-1882) married the solicitor son, Richard (18251892), of Richard Marston’s (1792-1866) brother Francis (1789-1850; IGI and Martin 1921, 28-29), thus continuing the long family connections between these two Societies and families. The other six Ludlow founders were: 2) Clark, Luttrel Lewis (1801-1875), solicitor of Mill St. Ludlow (Shrewsbury Chronicle, 22 January 1875, 5, col. 7). 3) Lloyd, Thomas (1802-1849) MD Edinburgh 1826 (Shrewsbury Chronicle, 16 March 1849, 3, col. 8), physician to the Ludlow Infirmary 1831-1843, and curator of the Museum of this Ludlow Society 1834-1841. He was also a founder member of the PMSA (1833, List xiv), and soon a member of its Council (1834, List vii and xxvii). He played a prominent part in the study of Ludlow geology (Bassett 1991, 13 and 66). 4) Meymott, Henry (1807-1895), surgeon of Broad St. Ludlow and medical officer to the Ludlow Union (Shrewsbury Chronicle, 12 April 1895, 7, col. 3). 5) Morris, George (1808-1843), solicitor of Broad St. (Shrewsbury Chronicle, 21 April 1843, 3, col. 7). He was Secretary and Treasurer of this Ludlow Society (Lloyd 1983) 6) Salwey, Humphrey (1803-1877), solicitor of The Cliff, Ludlow (Burke, Landed Gentry, 1952, 2238) and another active fossil collector. He survived long enough to be granted an obituary in the geological literature, which later developed (see H[opkinson] 1877 - who named a new species of graptolite after him in 1873). Salwey was also an active supporter of the later Malvern FC (Symonds 1870, 10-11). 7) Wellings, Thomas (1758-1841), church lecturer at Ludlow (1800-1841) and vicar of Bromfield, near Ludlow (1822-1841) (Monumental Inscription, Bromfield church, and Shrewsbury Chronicle, 9 July 1841, 3, col. 6). It is notable that among these seven founders were two medical men, and a druggist. In addition the following two also served on the Society’s first Committee, although they had not attended the inaugural meeting. 8) Hutchins, John (1772-1846), Dorset-born annuitant, banker and magistrate of Broad St. Ludlow (Shrewsbury Chronicle, 25 September 1846, 3, col. 6). It was he who had defrayed the expenses of the Ludlow historian, Thomas Wright (1810-1877) to attend Cambridge University (see Wright’s ODNB entry). 9) Lewis, Thomas Taylor (1801-1858), curate of Aymestrey and a pioneer of the geology of Shropshire, who had been of crucial help to the Silurian work here of Roderick Murchison from 1831 (Thackray 1977).

This Ludlow Society also produced printed annual reports, if briefer than those of the WNHS. The following seem to be all that now survive (Ludlow Museum archives). That of the inaugural meeting (1833) and Annual Reports for the 2nd year (1836), 7th (1841), 1845, and 1858 and Rules (1855). Additional sources of historical value, which survive, include their Museum’s Visitors’ Book from April 1834. This shows how many of the more famous naturalists and geologists of the 1830s then visited the Museum in its first six years including some from America, France, Denmark and Belgium. Of particular significance was one by ‘Miss Worsley of Bristol, on 1 May 1834’. This is certainly the botanist Anna (1807-1876; Allen 2001, VIII, 252). Her visit immediately followed a course of ten lectures on geology given by her blind brother the Unitarian Samuel Worsley (1803-1888; Allen 1981, 154) to the Bristol Institution, from 21 April 1834 (Gentleman’s Magazine, NS 2, 192, August 1834; Prospectus in Bristol City Library B 9716). Her Ludlow visit led to Samuel giving a similar course of eight lectures to, and for the financial benefit of, the Ludlow NHS, from September 1834 (Analyst 1, 222, October 1834; Prospectus in Ludlow Museum archives). This visit was followed by another on 1 June 1834 by Dr. [Aaron Wall] Davis [c.1789-1868; Times, 19 November 1868, 1] of Presteign, Radnorshire. He was soon to be involved with the complex institution which followed in Herefordshire (see below). Then Edwin Lees and John Evans came together from Worcester, on 11 July 1834, proving the continuing links with the Worcester NHS. Other visitors were metropolitan, like first visits from the geologist Roderick Murchison on 18 August 1834 and the entomologist Mr. [Frederick William] Hope (1797-1862), founder of the Oxford chair of Zoology 1869, but then still of Netley, Shropshire, on 4 September 1834 (Smith 1986). A Ludlow NHS donations book from 1836 to 1850 also survives and again demonstrates close connections with Worcester. The later, by no means unchequered, history of this Society and its Museum has been documented by Lloyd (1983). The Shropshire and North Wales Natural History Societies The remainder of Shropshire soon responded by founding an even wider-based Society, in the county town, Shrewsbury, on 26 June 1835 (Torrens 1985). This Shropshire Society also founded a Museum, but it could never raise the funds to build its own purposebuilt Museum, in the way that Worcester had. Their first Shropshire Museum was in a rented building in Dogpole, Shrewsbury (Torrens 1987). A planned museum building, of which plans still survive in the Society’s archives (Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury) dated 1837 was never erected, despite their membership having reached 190 by January 1836. But uniquely Shrewsbury School was soon involved when, in January 1837, 12 praepositors [prefects] at the school were made members of the society in return for a School donation of £100. 168

H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative

Figure 4: Bookplate of the Shropshire and North Wales NH and Antiquarian Society (Torrens 1985).

Two of the most influential founding members here were again doctors in Shrewsbury. The first was Thomas Du Gard (1777-1840; Gentleman’s Magazine, 169, November 1840, 556 - M.D. St Andrews 1804). Du Gard had been one of the original Honorary Members of the Geological Society of London, elected 1807 and he had guided Oxford professor William Buckland on ‘the first geological tour he ever made’, here in 1810 (Proceedings of the Geological Society, 3, 523, 1842). Du Gard was also of great assistance to Roderick Murchison (1792-1871) from the beginning of his Silurian-establishing researches in this region. This becomes clear from the letter Murchison wrote him from Aymestrey and Ludlow in July 1832 (Anon. 1903, 167168). The second doctor was Henry Johnson (1804-1881) MD Edinburgh 1829 (Salopian Shreds and Patches, 5, 2, 11 January 1882). Johnson became the pillar of this Society’s activities and the illuminated address the Shropshire NHS gave him in 1878, ‘for his 42 years long and able service to the Society’, as Honorary Secretary from its beginning, survives (G.H. Bainbridge archive 147/1, Shropshire Archives). Johnson and Du Gard also made the first donations to this Society’s collections which again were a main priority (Page 1979) and which collections became the foundation of today’s Shrewsbury Museum. But neither doctor seems yet to have been involved with the PMSA (at least Du Gard having by then retired). The third influential founder member was Darwin’s fellow schoolboy, the botanist Rev. William Allport Leighton (1805-1889; ODNB).

John Gilbert (1812-1845), later famous as an Australian ornithologist and marsupial hunter, was this Society’s first paid curator from May 1836. But he had to leave their employment, and these premises, in April 1837 when it was discovered that Gilbert (a member of Lady Huntingdon’s dissenting Connection) had married late in 1836. But women, even married ones, were not admitted to their Museum, in which Gilbert was then living. Such distractions, and the shortage of money here proved problematic. Some novel money-raising schemes were tried, including the 15 September 1842 mummy-unrolling (Torrens 1998, 57-58) by which time the word Antiquarian had been added to their title. A Natural History Society in North Wales The words ‘and North Wales’ in this Society’s title had caused further problems. The Magazine of Natural History for August 1836 (p. 331) announced that a new Caernarvonshire NHS had now been established. The secretary was the geologist and agriculturalist Joshua Trimmer (1795-1857; ODNB), who was then based in the Vale of Nantlle, at Baladeulyn, Caernarvonshire. This Society, which also founded a museum, also issued printed Reports, of which the 3rd (for 1835) and 5th (for 1836) survive (National Library of Wales). In these the full name of the Society ‘for investigating the Natural History and Antiquities of the Counties of Anglesey, Caernarvon and Merioneth’ was given. In their 3rd Report we read how the Shropshire NHS had now communicated with Trimmer, 169

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor who ‘could not avoid feeling that in its constitution, no less than its title, [the Shropshire NHS] appeared to infringe on our province’. Trimmer ‘was sure this must have arisen from the founders of that Society being in ignorance of the existence of [our] similar Association for investigating the Natural History and Antiquities of these three [North Wales] counties’ (Trimmer 1836, 11-12). Trimmer left North Wales in about 1840 and his Society seemingly then ceased to exist, although further research is needed. A National Influence? The historian Thomas Kelly (1909-1992) drew attention to a first attempt, in 1835, by James Silk Buckingham, the author and traveller (1786-1855; ODNB), to ‘secure Parliamentary sanction for the provision of public libraries from the rates’ (Kelly 1973, 6-8). From December 1832 to July 1837 Buckingham represented the new borough of

Sheffield in the first reformed parliament. In August 1835, after the above NHS developments, Buckingham brought in a Public Institutions Bill: ‘for the diffusing of Literary and Scientific Information, including Libraries and Museums [emphasis added]... within such Cities,... and Towns as may require them’ (Kelly 1973, 432-438). The timing of this Bill, which reached Committee stage in Parliament, before being abandoned, as well as the later initiative from Worcestershire (mentioned above), asking that such provincial Museums be filled with duplicates from the British Museum, suggests that this NHS movement had played some forgotten part in Buckingham’s initiative. The Warwickshire Natural History Society and a Natural History Society in Birmingham The County Natural History Society idea was next taken up at Warwick, John Conolly’s home base, early in 1836.

Figure 5: Portrait of the late Dr Conolly from Illustrated London News, 31 March 1866.

170

H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative Conolly is now known as ‘the most famous alienist of his generation’ (ODNB) for his humane treatment of the insane, especially after he had been appointed physician superintendent of the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell in 1839 (Hunter and Macalpine 1963, 805-809 and Scull 1985). The rather late start here for Conolly’s initiative has been put down to Conolly’s ‘lack of drive’ by McMenemey (1959, 107), but without supporting evidence. It is more likely that there was insufficient local support in Warwickshire any earlier. Currie and Lewis instead claim that this Society was set up only as a section of the Warwick and Leamington Phrenological Society. It published no journal, though it sponsored the Churches of Warwickshire survey (184458). The society never established a firm county-wide base and, its membership and finances in decline, it failed in the early 20th century, It did however establish Warwickshire’s first museum in Warwick market hall, in 1836. It became the official county museum in 1951 (Currie and Lewis 1994, 405-406). These rather ignorant claims fail to recognise the central importance of their Museum to the founders of this Society, which had published, as at Worcester, Annual Reports, and which were to reach at least volume 50, between 1837 and 1892 (copies at Warwick Museum). But the proximity of Warwick to the major regional capital, Birmingham, must have made attempts to achieve any County-wide penetration here much more difficult for this particular Society. Warwick had suffered clear competition from Birmingham, where yet another ‘Midland Natural History and Archaeological Society’ was announced on 20 June 1836 (Langford, 1868, 2, 588). This was set up to purchase the existing Museum of the shoe-maker and entomologist Richard Weaver (c.1783-1857 - see Entomologist’s Weekly Intelligencer, 9 January 1858, p. 117). He had opened his Birmingham Museum of Natural History in 1829 (WJ, 10 July 1834, p. 1). Weaver had been born in Worcester (WJ, 11 February 1836) and was soon busy helping the Vigornians with their own Museum collections. The Warwickshire Society was formed at a preliminary meeting on 12 April, and an inaugural one on 24 May, 1836 (which they wrongly thought, just as at Worcester, was the New Style birth date of Linnaeus; Torrens 2003, 88). These meetings were reported in the Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser on 28 May 1836 (2, cols. 2-4, and also Magazine of Natural History, 9, 440, 1836). The Minutes of the first (Warwickshire Record Office, CR 924/4/1), held at the Court House on 12 April 1836, record how ‘it was stated by Dr Conolly, as President of the Warwick and Leamington Phrenological Society, that the Members of that society had been desirous of extending its plan so as to embrace [all] the several departments of Natural History and had determined in March to call this

meeting... being also willing to transfer their subscriptions, books, casts and other property to the new society’. A Public Meeting was next called by Advertisement for 24 May 1836, when John Conolly read the initial report of the Committee. Thomas Ogier Ward (1803-1879), DMed Oxford 1834, and another founder PMSA member, then based in Birmingham, was elected the first chairman of this committee. He later moved to Shrewsbury, where he continued to be much involved with natural history, and wrote the already cited PMSA study of the medical topography of Shrewsbury (Ward 1841). Their first item was to report ‘that the Society was to take one of the large rooms in the Market Hall for the immediate reception of specimens for the museum, with the prospect of obtaining another [room] of equal size’. A thousand circulars had been sent out and this report cited the more significant responses received. Among them was one from Worcester from ‘Mr. [William] Holl, editor of The Analyst, who forwarded some papers regarding the formation of a Statistical Society’. Another was received from Birmingham regarding the Midland NH and Archaeological Society now being formed there, and which hoped for an exchange of specimens, and a union of exertions, from these two Societies. Finally two curators were nominated and elected to look after the Society’s Museum. These were a) George Lloyd (1804-1889; Times, 9 July 1889, 1 col. 1) MD Edinburgh 1826, who had joined the PMSA by 1834 (1834, List, 2, xvi), then of Shifnal, Shropshire, but soon of Leamington Spa, where he ‘of Newbold Terrace, Leamington’ was elected FGS on 5th December 1838, proposed by H.E. Strickland of the WNHS. Lloyd was equally active in both geology and botany; having ample means, he never had to practice medicine. Allen and Lousley (1979) record how a Birmingham resident had reported, in July 1836, how Lloyd ‘and Conolly are endeavouring to form [this] NHS and I understand go on prosperously’, and b) Henry Blenkinsop (1813-1866) surgeon, and son of PMSA member William Blenkinsop. Henry was later Mayor of Warwick, where he died on 20 June 1866 (Thornton 1972, xiv). By 1837 the word Archaeological had again been added to this Society’s title. Their County Museum again survives and its history has been outlined by Anon. (1922) and Green (1986). The situation in Herefordshire Nearby Herefordshire provides a more complex story from that of Worcestershire. An editorial in the Hereford Times (17 May 1834, 4) had ‘marvelled whether it be our destiny to witness the establishment of any LSI in the city of Hereford... The city of Worcester is far in advance of us’. There was soon to be the same situation in equally late-starting Leicester. A later Hereford letter soon noted that ‘it is now proposed to ascertain if there be a sufficient 171

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor number of persons favourable to the establishment of a Herefordshire Philosophical and Literary Society’ (11 June 1836, 4, col. 6). This led to a public meeting held on 2 December 1836, chaired by the Dean of Hereford [John Merewether 1797-1850; see ODNB], when a strangely amalgamated ‘Natural History, Philosophical and Literary Society [was] now formed for the County and City of Hereford’ (3 December 1836, 3, cols 6-7). Clearly a late amalgam of LPS and NHS had been favoured for the county of Herefordshire. One of those who spoke in favour at this meeting was the historian and collector, Rev. Charles John Bird (1777-1854; Eisel 2007, 31-35), who in 1839 gave a talk to this Society on the fossils of Woolhope and Fawnhope. Eisel noted how few the records of this NHS are, although cuttings of newspaper reports of meetings to circa 1850 survive at Hereford Public Library. The meeting’s convener, who then addressed it, was the astronomer Henry Lawson (1774-1855; ODNB). In 1788 he had been apprenticed to the Spectacle Makers’ Company in London and was twice its master, in 1803-5 and 1822-4, although he was only briefly in the business of optics, preferring to devote himself to private scientific study. He lived in Chelsea, with his mother until her death in 1823, when he moved to Hereford and there married, in December Amelia, (1776-1855), the only daughter of Thomas Jennings, vicar of St. Peter’s, Hereford (IGI and Daily News, 29 June 1855). Having independent means, meant Lawson had been able to equip his own observatory there by 1826. The establishment of this Society was once again noted in The Analyst (5, 347, 1836). This is confirmed by the printed First Annual Report of the Herefordshire Natural History, Philosophical, Antiquarian and Literary Society issued in 1838. By this late date, what was actually founded clearly greatly depended on what was already available in a particular location, and what locals aspired to need. At Hereford, still lacking any earlier LPS, such an initiative had to be all things to all people, as its formidable title shows. Their first printed Report did note one other fine initiative, namely that the Council had recently corresponded with some of the neighbouring Literary and Scientific Associations, and proposed... that the members of each, should, on visiting their respective Museums, be admitted as friends and associates; and they have much gratification in announcing the acceptance of their alliance, on the part of the Worcestershire NHS (Report, 1, 7, 1838). They also announced they intended to acquire a building adequate to the wants and wishes of the Institution. Clearly the double influences from Worcestershire, of NHS and Museum, were felt here from their foundation. A bequest from John Goode (1788-1838), Hereford plumber, glazier, and medallist of the London Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, in 1829, was to be used, ‘if a proper and sufficient site shall have been purchased and a building erected for the use of the said Society within the space of

two years from his death’, which came on 10 August 1838. The Society’s second printed Report, of 1839, however, sadly ‘lamented they have not yet been able to induce sufficient exertion in the public mind to secure this most essential desideratum’ (Report, 2, 7, 1839). Then, in 1841 Lawson left Hereford to settle permanently in Bath and the zest seems to have left this Society, which published their last known (4th) Report in that same year. By January 1850 the opening hours of the Herefordshire Museum were being reduced to lessen the sub-secretary’s salary and the Society sought a reduction in rent on the premises it occupied. Finally in concluding their report the Council cannot omit expressing their regret at the indisposition of its earliest patron and staunch supporter, the Very Revd the Dean of Hereford [Merewether]. The Council feel, the difficulties the institution has, from its earliest foundation, had to contend, unassisted as it has been by many who from their station in the County might have been fairly expected to lend their aid in its support (Hereford Public Library, MSS LC 806). Merewether, the Dean, had been an enthusiastic local antiquary and barrow-digger in as far away as Wiltshire (Marsden 1974) and it is clear that latterly this Society had become dominated by such antiquarian activities (see James Davies, Collectanea Herefordiensia 50 [1849-1850] 220-28, Hereford Public Library). This explains why this Society had already become so much less naturally historical than its neighbours. But a report on a later lecture, on Ferns by Rev. William Henry Purchas (1823-1903), to Herefordshire’s, by now, only ‘Literary, Philosophical and Antiquarian Society’ in March 1852 did draw a reverse recommendation, from the new Archdeacon of Hereford, Rev. Richard Lane Freer (c.1805-1863), who urged that now the Society had come to take a greater interest in things of the present day, after hearing almost unceasingly lectures upon the things of antiquity, this address should be followed up by a closer study of the Wild Flowers of Herefordshire (Hereford Journal, 31 March 1852, 3, col. 4). Merewether had died on 4 April 1850, and at the annual meeting on 27 January 1851 it was proposed that a Committee for the purpose of ascertaining and reporting upon the practicability of building a permanent museum and reading room for this Herefordshire institution be set up. But by 11 June 1852, a Report had been received from the Curators still noting the want of necessary accommodation (MSS LC 806). In April 1849 both the Hereford Times (21st) and the Hereford Journal (25th) had printed a letter signed ‘Physiologos’ [one who discourses on nature]. This reprinted the 1848 rules of the newly established northern 1846 Tyneside Naturalists’ FC (Goddard 1929, 56-59) and asked ‘how it is then that there is no such 172

H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative Society in Herefordshire? Societies of naturalists exist in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Surrey and in many other counties and it may be hoped that Herefordshire will soon be added to the list’ (6, cols. 1-2). Israel Cohen (1958) has argued convincingly that the author of this letter was Rev. William Samuel Symonds (1818-1887; see ODNB), an Anglican clergyman and geologist. The outcome of this letter was the formation of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club in 1851 (Blashill 1903). A historian of that Club noted ‘there had certainly been discussions during 1851 by some members of the Hereford Literary, Philosophical and Antiquarian Society about the formation of a Field Club’ (Ross 2000). In the event the local LPS and FC co-existed until February 1862, when two deputations unsuccessfully conferred to discuss the possible union of their two Societies (but they did not then do so, contra Currie and Lewis 1994, 185). Then on 25 October 1869 a flyer was issued by William John Humphrys (1841-1924), a Hereford solicitor, and the last Honorary Secretary of the Herefordshire (now again Natural History, Philosophical, Antiquarian and Literary) Society. This noted that the number of subscribers to this Society was still decreasing and ‘if the Institution is to cease to exist - and I confess I do not see how it is to be kept on foot - it is most desirable that it should be judiciously wound up’. This was agreed and in 1870 James Rankin MP (1842-1915) built the new Museum, which survives in Hereford, to which their collections passed. A useful summary, again by Humphrys, was published in 1875, describing the Old Museum opened by the Natural History, Philosophical, Antiquarian and Literary Society (Humphrys 1875). One of the more interesting snippets it revealed was that James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips (1820-1889; ODNB) had helped to bail this former Society out, by purchasing a very rare 1608 edition of Shakespeare’s Richard the Second for £60 in 1854, in a volume ‘with many other items’. Natural History Societies in the East Midlands a) In Derbyshire Derby had its own Literary and Scientific Society from 1808 to 1816 with another Philosophical Society there from about 1813 to 1859, both of which have now been studied by Paul Elliott (2009). A member of the latter was Dr. George Bott Churchill Watson (1811-1876, see Times, 19 October 1876, 12, col. 1) who was baptised, as an adult, in Derby in 1831 (IGI). He was the son of Charles Watson and Hannah Bott, who had married in Nottingham in August 1810 (IGI). Watson graduated MD at Edinburgh University in 1833 and, clearly inspired by Conolly PMSA’s initiative, soon suggested the foundation of a new NHS for this county. His first letter to the Derby Mercury (hereafter DM) noted that the proprietors of the existing Town and County library had already begun to collect materials towards a Museum there. This was followed by the foundation of the new Derbyshire County Museum and Natural History Society in 1835 (Elliott 2005, 408) which was established in February 1836 and housed in the building adjoining the public baths and wash houses

in Full Street (illustrated on the cover of Stanley 1976). The first Annual Meeting was held in March 1837 (DM, 22 March 1837) and the report on this listed donations and added favourable editorial comment (DM, 5 April 1837). Watson left Derby for Liverpool in 1838 but he had laid the foundation for the establishment of this joint NHS and Museum. Watson died on 12 August 1876 in Chester (Times, 19 October 1876, 12). Once again this earlier Society had founded what became the County Museum, the history of which has been outlined by Stanley (1976 who quotes an important MSS by Jones of 1859). b) In Nottinghamshire The same influence was clearly felt also in Nottingham with the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Society for the Study and Cultivation of Natural History founded in April 1836 (Cooper and King 2005, 7). The inaugural meeting of this Society was under the patronage of the fourth Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Clinton Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham-Clinton (1785-1851), local landowner and politician. Its establishment was announced in the Nottingham Journal (8 April 1836, 2, col. 5) which carried a long report of the meeting (3, col. 1), also summarised in the Magazine of Natural History 9, 330-331, and The Analyst 4, 322-323. The main driving force was once again a local medical man, the physician Dr John Calthorp Williams (1801-1856, see O’Donovan 1954), who had been elected to the PMSA in 1834, as ‘lecturer on medicine in the Medical School, Nottingham’ (List 2, xxi, 1834). Williams was in 1836 elected the NHS’s Curator of Ornithology, while Robert Bakewell (1810-1867); Entomologists’ Monthly Magazine 211, February 1868), nephew of the more famous geologist of the same name (1767-1843; ODNB), was elected curator for Entomology. This Society is noted by Inkster (1979, 47; but who confused the two Bakewells). The younger, Nottinghamshire NHS, Bakewell soon became a pioneer in the settlement of Victoria, Australia, arriving there early in 1840 with his brother, and returning to England only in 1857 (Henderson 1936, 441-442). This Society first rented rooms in the Bromley House Subscription Library, which had earlier housed a Nottingham Geological and Mineralogical Society and its collections since 1818 (Cooper and King 2005). A report of October 1837 (Nottingham Journal, 20 October 1837) shows that the new Society was flourishing and summarised the many donations made to the NHS Museum. By now two clergymen were in charge, Rev. William Joseph Butler (1797-1869), vicar of St. Nicholas, Nottingham, as Honorary Secretary, and Rev. John Francis Thomas Wolley (1796-1877), vicar of Beeston, in the chair. In 1838 this new Society took over the collections of the old Geological Society, when they presumably amalgamated. By now the collections were beginning to contain much more than just natural history, and there was increasing resistance from Bromley House Library 173

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor members, who did not want to see their library turned into a museum. Glover’s Directory of Nottingham recorded the presence of the NHS Museum and ‘a cabinet of minerals, and numerous antiquities, curiosities and paintings’ still at Bromley House in 1844. But on 8 September 1845 Bromley House Library resolved that ‘the members of the NHS be allowed to remove their specimens on the immediate payment of £15 [with] in two months, and that the second year’s arrears of rent be remitted’ of their still unpaid rent (Russell 1916, 9485). After this the Society seems have come to an end. In about 1833-1835 a medical school, to which Williams had been appointed, had also been established in Nottingham, also under the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle-underLyme. O’Donovan records that ‘despite having such a distinguished patron... the idea of a Nottingham Medical School soon fell through and by 1836 Williams speaks of it in the past tense’ (O’Donovan 1954, 749). But this Duke was not all that ‘distinguished’, and his ODNB entry characterizes him ‘as having gained the reputation of representing all that was worst about the English aristocracy’. The Duke’s local mansion, Nottingham Castle, had been burnt to the ground by locals in 1831 and never rebuilt. Perhaps the choice of this Duke helps explain the short lives of these two Nottingham initiatives. The history of Nottingham’s later famous Natural History Museum has been described by Cooper and King (2005). The situation in Leicester Leicestershire was equivalent to Herefordshire in starting its normal LPS there very late, in the spring of 1835, in the county town (Lott 1935, 2; Boylan 2010). Their printed Circular announcing its formation on 15 May 1835 survives. This was issued by the provisional secretary Alfred Paget, with George Shaw in the chair (Leicestershire Record Office, 14 D 55 57/1). The LLPS had originated when these ‘two young men of Leicester, a physician and a lawyer, met’ and discussed the need for such a Society there. These were the Halifax-born son of a surgeon now based there, Dr. George Shaw (1800-1888) and the lawyer son of the Unitarian Leicester surgeon, Thomas Paget (1768-1841; Burke, Landed Gentry 1952, 1952), Alfred Paget (1810-1904; Times, 30 August 1904, p. 1, col 1). Again, both founders had strong medical connections, with Shaw a member of an existing local Medical Society. Brock has described the highly political founding of this Society during its 150th anniversary celebrations in 1985. His unpublished account is now available on the Leicester LPS website (see Boylan 2010, 13). A real problem is the lack of surviving Leicester LPS documentation. The Minute book for its first nine years had been lost in the 1850s (Leicester LPS Transactions, 1, 2, 1875; Lott 1935, 3). Shaw, who graduated MD at Cambridge in 1829, first practised medicine in Manchester, where he became a member of the Manchester LPS (Mott 1878). This has been claimed as the model for the Leicester Society. But Shaw, ‘physician’, had been elected FLS on 1 June 1830

and had taken an early interest in natural history. He was also a member of the PMSA, by at least 1837 (1837 List, 5, 494), as was Paget’s half-brother, the surgeon Thomas Paget junior (1796-1875), both of Leicester. So it is possible that John Conolly’s influential PMSA suggestion, in 1833, of forming the NHS, could have played a part in these Leicester developments. Notably this Leicester body was a Society, not an Institution. It never erected its own building. Clearly the lack of any existing LPS here again overrode any idea that a separate NHS might be founded here. But a Natural History Museum had already been suggested in the Inaugural Address of the first LPS’s ‘president’, Rev. Andrew Irvine (c.1786-1846), who, on 3 March 1837, had asked whether the Society ought not to undertake the formation of a Natural History Museum, to which he would willingly present his own collection of specimens, Mineralogical and Geological (Lott 1835, 9 and 13). Irvine had been elected FGS in 1820 and died in London in December 1846 (Gentleman’s Magazine, NS 27, March 1847, 324-326). His was clearly another inspiration behind the idea that this Society should form a Leicester Town (and thus effectively County) Museum in 1840 (the printed circular suggesting this, dated 24 November 1840, also survives - Leicestershire Record Office, 14 D 55 57/17). Another local geologist member was the forgotten Leicester-born John Laurance (1808-1886), a staunch supporter of the LLPS. He became a drainage, tithe and railway surveyor (on the Midland Railway) working from Leicester between at least 1837 and 1841 (Bendall 1997, 2, 307), to which LPS he read seven geological and archaeological papers between 1838 and 1841 (Lott 1935, 19-20). Laurance had earlier been the author of the rare and fascinating, Leicester-printed, book Geology in 1835 (Laurance 1835), which was soon translated into German (Laurance 1836). One of Laurance’s papers was on Fossil Fruits discovered in the local Coal formations. This was published in the Worcester-originated The Analyst (Laurance 1837). Laurance was elected FGS in April 1839. In 1842 he left England to work in Berlin, and soon after, in 1843, was elected an Honorary Member of the LLPS. He continued to supply German specimens to the LLPS’s Museum (Lott 1935, 32). On his return from the Continent, Laurance had settled as a land agent, by 1851, to Earl Congleton at Elton, near Oundle, Northamptonshire. Here he died on 22 May 1886, aged 77 (Times, 26 May 1886, p. 1, col. 1 - which wrongly called him FRGS in confusion with the Royal Geographical Society). The Leicester Society remained only slightly less confused, continuing to record his Honorary Membership until 1894, eight years after his death. A memorial had been presented in the summer of 1846 to the Leicester Town Council that this Society’s Museum should be presented to the town. But 174

H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative it was not till three years later that, the new Act [of Parliament, for encouraging the establishment of Museums in large Towns having at last - (Act 1845)] been adopted, the building [of the Proprietary School] was purchased [for £3,000] and the rooms, made ready for the reception of this Society’s Museum (Transactions of the LLPS 1845-1850, part 4, 1878, 125). A good review of the history of this important Town Museum, now the New Walk Museum, was given by its former curator in 1960 (Walden 1960) and a recent history is by another, Patrick Boylan (2010 - Chapter 5). Another inter-connected Natural History initiative here came via The Analyst, the pioneering, provincial, periodical started in Worcester by William Holl (see above). This he co-edited, from 1837, with Leicestershire’s Edward Mammatt junior (1807-1860), who was a member of the Leicester LPS from 1837 (Leicester LPS Transactions 1, 20, 1875). He was the son of geologist Edward Mammatt senior (1776-1835). They were both also members of the Derby Philosophical Society (Elliott 2009, 274). Edward junior’s proved an extraordinary life. He was born in 1807, and became blind when six years old, but at 13, he was organist to Ashby-de-la-Zouch parish church, a position he filled for 40 years. He also managed the Burton Brewery, lectured on anatomy, astronomy, electricity, geology, sound and pneumatics. He then edited The Analyst, at first with Holl and Neville Wood, from 1837 as FSA (by which London Society he had been awarded a silver medal for his writing apparatus for use by the blind) and from 1838, after it had been relinquished by Holl, volumes 8-10 alone, now as FGS, to which he had been elected in 1838, with the support of Holl.

Berkshire’ was among the first of PMSA members (List 1, xiv, 1833); 2) The original intention of this Sussex Institution was to represent the whole county (however much this was derided in the local press ; Cooper 2009) and which had on display, if only for a sadly short time, the extraordinary geological Museum of Mantell which, after this project failed on the death of its principal patron, went instead to the British Museum in November 1837. If this Sussex plan had succeeded, it could have been another Connolly-based model, and one in a southern county. It seems this NHS initiative must have been wider. The problem is the lack of recorded histories of such provincial, and thus historically marginal, and sometimes short-lived, institutions and museums. The WNHS president had recorded in 1836 how their own example had already been imitated ‘in the counties of Shropshire, Caernarvonshire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire [all discussed here] and Norfolk’ (Walsh 1836, 12). This last must be the Society to which Charles Hastings was later to refer, when noting that the geologist Adam Sedgwick ‘had lately delivered a

Mammatt junior died in April 1860 (Boase 1965, 2, 714 and Scott 1907, 342-343). His connection with The Analyst demonstrates another connection between the WNHS and the LLPS. Elsewhere We have already seen how this NHS idea had also been taken up, for however short a period, in North Wales and in Birmingham. Another project, equally short-lived, which may well have been influenced by this NHS-cumMuseum initiative was the Sussex Scientific and Literary Institution and Mantellian Museum, founded in March 1836, in Brighton (Dean 1999, 151-157). There had been an earlier Library Society here, seemingly founded in 1825, which later transmogrified into the Brighton LSI of 1833 (Brighton Guardian, 6 November 1833, 3, col. 2). The latter was founded to put on public display Gideon Mantell’s Museum of Geology (Cooper 2009) but which had a very short life. But three points are notable. 1) George Mantell (1789-1859; Times, 16 July 1859, 1, col. 1), Gideon’s first cousin, ‘Esq. surgeon at Farringdon,

Figure 6: Title page of the last (10, 1840) volume of The Analyst.

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Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor course of lectures to the NHS at Norwich’ (Hastings 1837, 15). This must be the same lecture course referred to by Sedgwick’s biographers as given in the winter of 1835-6 at the new Museum there (Clark and Hughes 1890, 1, 451453 and 2, 580-582). Norwich already had its own Norfolk and Norwich Literary Institution, founded in 1822, and its similarly named Museum was established in 1824 (Jewson 1979) and this county and town seems then also to have adopted the concept of the NHS in the 1830s. Others which must have had similar origins are the Warrington NHS (Kelly 1973, 10), and the Penzance NHS of 1839, which again had added ‘the investigation of Antiquities’ by 1845, but only whose geographical context has been explored by Naylor (2002). Other NHS are listed in Scotland, like the Orkney NHS of 1837 (Kelly 1966, 224) and in Ireland, Londonderry from 1837 and Dublin from 1838 (Hume 1853, 205 and 214). More surprising, Samuel Farmar Jarvis (1786-1851) had presented An address to the citizens of Hartford, on the birth-day of Linnaeus, May 24th, 1836: on behalf of the objects of the NHS, formed October 8, 1835. This address (Jarvis 1836) in far-away Hartford, Connecticut must, by its date, be the most farflung adoption of John Conolly’s forgotten NHS idea.

The difference between these two movements seems to be that the later, archaeological, one, came to produce abundant printed reports and literature, whilst the main focus of the earlier NHSs was the much less attractive one, if only to idle historians, of museum-building, whose history is so much more complex than that recorded in print, hopefully preserved in libraries. Probably because of the lesser interest in the object as a historical source, over the printed word, there has since been correspondingly much less interest in these NHS. The big problem is the lack of reliable museological literature. Arthur MacGregor has made a major contribution towards putting this right, which we honour here. Postscript Recently Kevin Allen pleaded that ‘we need a wider study of the local history surrounding [Edward] Elgar’ (2012, 25). But we need to question the rosy future he now reports of new library provision in Worcester (Elgar’s birthplace). The new Worcester County Record Office [has] moved to an impressive new award-winning building in Worcester, ‘The Hive’. This will house a re-stocked Public Library and the Library of the [equally new] University of Worcester, the first fully integrated public and university library in Europe... an ideal base, with the Elgar Birthplace [a Museum], to launch a collaborative approach to researching the City’s musical and social history.

Conclusion It is hoped that this paper has demonstrated how the WNHS and John Conolly’s ideas bore real fruit in English Midland Counties in the 1830s, and then further afield. The archaeologist Stuart Piggott (1910-1996) noted how the origins of the [English] archaeological societies, on a county or a regional basis, and as a part of Victorian social life, seem hardly to have been considered either by historians of that period, or by archaeologists themselves (Piggott 1974, 1 and 1976, 171). Exactly the same can be said of these forgotten NHS. They are nowhere mentioned in the recent volume on English County Histories (Currie and Lewis 1994). Piggott outlined how new archaeological societies arose in the decade 1844-1855, although, as we have seen, many of these earlier NHS had already espoused archaeology, or antiquarianism earlier, in that or the preceding decade. But by the end of this century, new tensions had arisen because of the often strained relationship between these two subjects. William Cole (1844-1922) of the Essex FC wrote in 1898: I, personally, am an advocate for the encouragement of two large and flourishing societies in each county in the Kingdom - a scientific (natural history) society and an archaeological. The archaeological society should be quite distinct from the natural history one, or the publication of family and parish records will quickly swamp natural history work and papers, a disastrous result only too manifest in the journals of some of the combined archaeological and natural history societies (Cole 1898, 362).

My interest in this city’s ‘local history’ started 40 years ago. In April 2002, I gave a paper at the British Museum’s 250th Anniversary conference ‘Enlightening the British’ (Torrens 2003). This included a note (p. 84) about the importance of the pioneering Worcester NHS, founded in 1833 in the hope that other such county-wide Societies would follow, to foster other societies, which would then support County museums and libraries. This wider encouragement certainly happened and so I moved on to this present study of the WNHS and its influence. The Worcester Public Library was housed, after 1881, in the WNHS’s fine former Museum, opened in 1837 and named the Hastings Museum, after that city had adopted the Public Libraries Act (1850) in 1879. The City authorities then purchased this building, for £2,820, when the WNHS handed ‘over the whole of its contents, museum specimens, pictures and the valuable collection of scientific books free, to the Corporation’ (Edwards 1907). Their deliberations were reported in 1883 (WJ, 2 June 1883, 2) when WNHS generosity was applauded. Their gift had included their ‘library, selected with much care and judgement, presented to the city for the permanent [sic!] use of its citizens’. By now, Worcester Library’s book stock comprised 55,000 volumes, one of the largest in England (Kelly 1973, 154). Books from the WNHS either had WNHS embossed on their spines, or carried the bookplate shown here

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Figure 7: Bookplate in a volume from the WNHS library. One of 1200 volumes presented to the Worcester City Library in 1880 (courtesy of Stuart Baldwin). In 2002 I had made endless attempts, in this run down Public Library, to trace the printed and manuscript records of the WNHS once held there (see Strickland 1840). Despite repeated questions to the Library staff, and letters to the Collections Manager at the City Museum (dated 29 January 2002) and to the County Archivist (dated 21 May 2002) I was able to uncover only few relevant items. By 2003, a new Local History Centre had been opened, while the old card index to the City Library’s holdings was in the process of being discarded (despite Nicholson Baker’s eloquent plea that such items must be sacrosanct; Baker 1996). The City Archivist had at least warned me (letter dated 8 July 2002) of ‘the very real problems about material remaining at the Foregate Street [old City] Library which were not being transferred to the [new] Centre’. Then, the Library News column in Private Eye, dated 29 April 2011, read

There’s no shortage of local authorities throwing millions of pounds at grandiose Public Finance Initiative schemes... Worcestershire County Council expects to open its £43 million town centre PFI library next year [2012], at an annual cost to council taxpayers of £4.8 million from 2012/13.... Locals... [had] opposed the sale of hundreds of rare and old books by the council in order to raise a few bob last month. As Private Eye was publishing this, another sale of these books was being held in Cirencester (Dominic Winter Book Auctions, 26-27 January 2011). Only one lot, in this sale recorded its WNHS provenance. This was lot 54, the WNHS’s presentation copy of Roderick Murchison’s Geology of Russia (1845). Most others simply said ‘ex-lib’, although many bore WNHS bookplates (as in figure 7). The final sale, on 7 April 2011, included more ex-WNHS books. Booksellers’ catalogues since have regularly revealed them. Worcester News on line, for 8 April 2011, announced that 177

Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor £237,145 had been raised by all these ‘sales of old and rare books, after calling a halt, following withering criticism of the process’. But the WNHS library, and much else, was no longer available to put into ‘The Hive’. Acknowledgements In addition to many curators and librarians too numerous to list, I owe real thanks to Stuart Baldwin (Witham), Rhiannon Birch (London), Lynda Brooks (London), John Catt (Harpenden), Wendy Cawthorne (London), Ann Charlton (Cambridge), the late Michael Cooper, John Eisel (Worcester), Paul Elliott (Derby), Margaret Green (Oxford), Basil Greenslade (Bath), Tony Irwin (Norwich), Mary Munslow Jones (Sidmouth), Simon Knell (Leicester), Annette Leech (Worcester), Ann Lum (London), Gordon McOuat (Canada), Stella Pierce (Wincanton), Jon Radley (Warwick), Kees Rookmaaker (Singapore) and Jon Topham (Leeds). Bibliography Act 1845. An Act for encouraging the Establishment of Museums in large Towns. London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 661-662. Alberti, S. J. M. M. 2002. Placing nature: natural history collections and their owners in nineteenth century provincial England. British Journal for the History of Science 35, 271-311. Allen, D. E. 1981. Samuel Butler and natural history. Archives of Natural History 10, 153-154. Allen, D. E. 1983. Review of Jones (1980). Archives of Natural History 11, 355-356. Allen, D. E. 1987. The Natural History Society in Britain through the years. Archives of Natural History 14, 243259. Allen, D. E. 1994. The Naturalist in Britain (second edition). Princeton, Princeton University Press. Allen, D. E. 2001. Naturalists and Society Aldershot. Ashgate. Allen, D. E. and Lousley, D. W. 1979. Some letters to Margaret Stovin (1756?-1846), botanist of Chesterfield. Naturalist 104, 155-163. Allen, K. 2012. Researching the Norbury papers, or One Thing leads to Another. Elgar Society Journal 17, no. 5, 4-26. Anon. 1833. Report of the Committee of the Worcestershire Natural History Society read... July 2 1833. Worcester, Chalk and Holl. Anon. 1835. Particulars of the Anniversary Festival at the Guildhall and the ceremony of laying the First Stone of the Worcestershire Museum. Worcester, Tymbs and Deighton. Anon. 1861. Obituary notice of Christopher Henry Hebb Gentleman’s Magazine. December, 687-689. Anon. 1863. British Birds: a very fine and extensive collection... to be sold by auction by Messrs Hobbs, at the Natural History Society’s room, Worcester, on

Friday the 20th day of February 1863. Worcester, Holl and Drake (copy in Bodleian, Johnson coll. Oxford). Anon. 1882a. Worcestershire Exhibition Catalogue, (first edition). Worcester, Tucker. Anon. 1882b. Worcestershire Exhibition Catalogue, (second edition). Worcester, Tucker. Anon. 1903. [Report of Ludlow area field excursion]. Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 1900-1902, 157-170. Anon. 1919. Obituary - John Hopkinson, FLS, FGS, FZS, FRMS, AssocInstCE Geological Magazine 56, 431432. Anon. 1922. A Short Guide to the Warwick Museum. Warwick, Warwickshire Natural History and Archaeological Society. Baker, N. 1996. Discards. In The Size of Thoughts, 125181, London, Chatto and Windus. Bassett, D.A. 1991. Roderick Murchison’s The Silurian System: a sesquicentennial tribute. Special Papers in Palaeontology 44, 7-90. Bendall, S. 1997. Dictionary of Land Surveyors and local Map-makers of Great Britain and Ireland 1530-1850. London, British Library. Blashill, T. 1903. Annual Address. Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 1902, 288-299. Boase, F. 1965, Modern English Biography. London, Frank Cass. Boylan, P. 2010. Exchanging Ideas Dispassionately and Without Animosity: The Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society 1835-2010. Leicester, The Society. Clark, E.K. 1924. The History of 100 years of life of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. Leeds, Jowett and Sowry. Clark, J. W. and Hughes, T.M. 1890. The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick. Cambridge. University Press. Cohen, I. 1958. Origin of the Woolhope Club. Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 25, 348. Cole, W. 1898. Suggestion for the establishment of an Annual Congress of the Scientific (Natural History) Societies of East Anglia. Essex Naturalist 10, 361-368. Colvin, H. 1995. A biographical dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, third edition. New Haven and London, Yale University Press. Cooper, J. 2009. Gideon Mantell and the Brighton press 1834-1838, in Brook A. (editor), What on earth is under Sussex?. Journal of West Sussex History 77, 33-46. Cooper, M. 1997. The Worcester Book Trade in the 18th Century. Worcestershire Historical Society: Occasional Publication, 8. Cooper, M. P. and King, A. E. 2005. ‘The best penny’s worth they ever had’: Nottingham Natural History Museum a history, 1867 to 2000. Nottingham, City Museums and Galleries. Currie, C. R. J. and Lewis, C. P. 1994. English County Histories: A Guide. Stroud, Alan Sutton. Dack, C. 1899. The Peterborough Gentlemen’s Society. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 1899, N.S. 5, 141-160. 178

H.S. Torrens: A forgotten provincial English museums initiative Dean, D. R. 1999. Gideon Mantell and the discovery of dinosaurs. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Desmond, A. 1989. The Politics of Evolution. Chicago and London, Chicago University Press. Dominic Winter Book Auctions, 26-27 January 2011. Sale Catalogue, Day 1 lots 1-616, Day two lots 617-809, 144 pages. Downes, C. M. 1881. Worcester Public Library and Hastings Museum, A Retrospect. Worcester, Deighton and Co. Edwards, W. E. 1907. The Museum as an Index to the Flora, Fauna, Geology and Antiquities of Worcestershire. Worcester, Baylis. Eisel, J. C. 2007. Duncumb, Bird and Bird. Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 55, 19-42. Elliott, P. 2005. Towards a geography of English scientific culture. Urban History 32, 391-412. Elliott, P. 2009. The Derby Philosophers, Science and Culture in British Urban Society, 1700-1850. Manchester and New York Manchester University Press. Goddard, T. R. 1929. History of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle, Reid. Gray, J. E. 1836. Some remarks on Museums of Natural History. Analyst 5, 273-280. Green, M. 1986. Warwickshire Museum, 1836-1986. Warwick, Warwickshire Museum. Gwilliam, B. 1993. Old Worcester people and places. Worcester, Halfshire. Hastings C. 1835. Proceedings of the Second Anniversary Festival with the Address of the Council [year ending 25 March 1835]. Worcester, Lees. Hastings, C. 1837. Address... to the WNHS on the opening of the Worcestershire Museum, 15 September 1836. London, Sherwood et al. and Worcester, Deighton. Henderson, A. 1936. Early Pioneer Families of Victoria and Riverina. A Genealogical and Biographical Record. Melbourne, McCarron Bird and Co. Hilton, B. 2006. A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846. Oxford, Clarendon Press. H[opkinson], J. 1877. Obituary - Humphrey Salwey. Geological Magazine (2) 4, 144. Hopkinson, J. 1881. The Formation and Arrangement of Provincial Museums. Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society 1, 193-214. Hume, A. M. 1853. The Learned Societies and Printing Clubs of the United Kingdom. London, Willis. Humphreys, W. J. 1875. Letter on the Old Museum. Hereford Times, 27 March 1875, 8. Hunter, R. and Macalpine, I. 1963. Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry 1535-1860. London, Oxford University Press. Inkster, I. 1979. Scientific culture and Education in Nottingham, 1800-1843. Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire 83, 45-50. Jarvis, S. F. 1836. An address to the citizens of Hartford, on the birth-day of Linnaeus, May 24th, 1836: on behalf

of the objects of the Natural History Society, formed October 8, 1835. Hartford, Connecticut, Case, Tiffany and Co. Printers. Jewson, C. B. 1979. Simon Wilkin of Norwich. Norwich, Centre of East Anglian Studies. Jones, M. M. 1980. The Lookers-Out of Worcestershire. Worcester, Worcestershire Naturalists Club. Kelly, T. 1966. Early Public Libraries. London, Library Association. Kelly, T. 1973. A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain 1845-1965. London, Library Association. Klingender, F. D. 1947. Art and the Industrial Revolution. London, Carrington. Klingender, F. D. 1951. William Smith and the Scarborough Museum. Architectural Review, 110, 389-392. Knell, S. 2000. The Culture of English Geology 18151851. Aldershot, Ashgate. La Touche, J. D. 1878. Naturalist Field Club Excursions. Midland Naturalist 1, 249-251. Langford, J. A. 1868. A Century of Birmingham Life (two volumes). Birmingham and London, Osborne and Simpkin, Marshall. Laurance , J. 1835. Geology in 1835 - A popular sketch of the Progress, Leading Features and Latest Discoveries of this Rising Science. London, Simpkin, Marshall and Co. Laurance, J. 1836. Geologie im Jahr 1835. Eine leicht saszliche Skizze der Fortschritte, Hauptzuege und neuesten Entdeckungen in dieser, im Fortschreiten begriffenen Wissenschaft. Weimar, Landes-IndustrieComptoirs. Laurance, J. 1837. Communication on fossil fruits found in Lancashire. Analyst 7, 327-336. Lees, E. 1834. The Affinities of Plants with Man and Animals. London, Edwards. Lees, E. 1837. The Doncaster Lyceum etc. Naturalis, 2, 366. Lees, E. 1882. MSS Letter dated 31 August 1882 to John Lloyd Bozward, then a Worcester Councillor, copy in HST collection (original owned by Mary Munslow Jones of Sidmouth; see Jones 1980, 5 and 33). Lloyd, D. 1983. The History of Ludlow Museum. Ludlow, Museum. Lott, F. B. 1935. The Centenary Book of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society. Leicester, Thornley and Son. MacGregor, A. 2001. The Ashmolean as a museum of natural history. Journal of the History of Collections 13, 125-144. MacGregor, A. 2007. Forming an identity: The early Society and its context, 1707-1751, in Visions of Antiquity: The Society of Antiquaries of London, 17072007 (ed. S. Pearce), Archaeologia 111, 45-73. MacGregor, A. and Headon, A. 2000. Re-inventing the Ashmolean [Museum]. Natural history and natural theology at Oxford in the 1820s to 1850s. Archives of Natural History 27, 369-406. McMenemey, W. H. 1947. A History of the Worcester Royal Infirmary. London, Press Alliances Ltd. McMenemey, W. H. 1959. The Life and Times of Sir Charles Hastings. Edinburgh and London, Livingstone. 179

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Coda This collection of essays in honour of our dear colleague Arthur MacGregor has been long in production, for which the editors beg the forgiveness of the publisher, the contributors and most of all of Arthur himself. On reading through the contributions, I have been reminded of the wide range of Arthur’s interests and expertise (although this volume scarcely touches upon his interests in keratinous tissue, bone and ivory or animal husbandry). Those of us who worked with him at the Ashmolean have memories of a colleague who was a model of learning, industry, equanimity, and loyalty to his many friends.



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Michael Vickers