Books about antiques

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2005 by Alfred Mayor

A mammoth book

If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a huge picture worth two thousand? The question might well be asked about The Complete Collection of Antiquities from the Cabinet of Sir William Hamilton, which is sold without a lectern, although one is certainly needed. The book is 17 3/4 inches tall, 12 inches wide, and weighs 14 pounds. There is a built-in bookmark nearly an inch wide that appears to be silk. It comes wrapped in tissue paper lest it defile the pages.

Sir William Hamilton is known for his interest in volcanoes, which he studied assiduously from 1764 until 1800 while he was the British envoy extraordinary to the court of Ferdinand IV in Naples. He is also known for the two collections of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman antiquities he assembled, and finally he is most luridly known for his mistress and then second wife, Emma Hart, who subsequently ran off with Horatio Nelson. The present book is devoted to Hamilton's first collection of antiquities, which he sold for [pounds sterling]8,140 to the British Museum in London in 1772, and which is the core of its collection of Greek vases. By that time the first two (of four) volumes devoted to Hamilton's collection had already appeared--in 1766 and 1767. The books were printed in Florence, where a special method was invented to produce the huge plates.

Hamilton commissioned the compilation in 1765 with, as author, a glib adventurer named Pierre Francois Hugues, who assigned himself the title of Baron D'Hancarville. Always on the run from creditors, the baron fetched up in Naples a year before Hamilton arrived. He apparently sold himself to Hamilton as a great antiquarian and set to work. At the beginning of volume one he wrote that the vases were to be made "useful to Artists, to Men of Letters and by their means to the World in general." It was Hamilton's stated intention that the plates were to be removed from the book at will to adorn print collections or the wall. The plates were also to serve as patterns for "Manufacturers of earthen ware and China, and to those who make vases in silver, copper, glass, marble &c." Apropos, Hamilton sent some of the first proofs of the prints to Josiah Wedgwood, who soon produced a successful line of black basalt vases with red encaustic decoration in the Etruscan style.

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Hancarville had hoped his commentary would be welcomed as a brilliant new universal history of ancient art. In fact, the text rambles and is full of contradictions. On the other hand, the plates were enthusiastically received all over Europe, since it was the first time ancient vases had been so precisely pictured.

The present book is an adaptation of the copy of the four-volume compilation given to Anna Amalia, duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, by her son, Carl August, in 1780. It is still in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar. The original volumes are even larger than the present one, measuring 18 3/8 by 14 3/8 inches, and represent one of the major publishing efforts of the eighteenth century. The original text, in both English and French, is omitted in this adaptation. Instead the plates are preceded by essays about Naples and Hamilton's life there that were written specifically for this book. The city was a major stop on the grand tour, and Hamilton received many of the grandest tourists of the day, including Goethe, Mozart, and the future Czar Paul I of Russia. The most privileged of his guests walked with Hamilton to the top of Vesuvius to absorb his intimate knowledge of vulcanology in general and Vesuvius in particular, about which he was the acknowledged expert.

There is also an essay about Hamilton's two collections of antiquities and the involved history of the four-volume book. One-upping the original, all text in the present book is in three languages--German, French, and English, Still, a lectern would be nice.

The Complete Collection of Antiquities from the Cabinet of Sir William Hamilton, by Pierre Francois Hugues D'Hancarville, with essays by Sebastian Schutze and Madeleine Gisler-Huwiler. (Taschen, 888-827-2436), $200.00 (hardcovers).