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Greek black-figure eye amphora p.5 Coptic tunic fragment showing a Bacchanalia p.11 details p.30 details p.47 Greek red-figure mug with female head p.6 Large Egyptian black-top bowl p.11 Digital Catalogue 2 details p.31 details p.48 Summer 2021 Greek red-figure bell-krater p.6 Egyptian black-top jar p.11 details p.32 details p.49 Greek black-figure ovoid alabastron p.6 Egyptian speckled bowl p.11 NAVIGATION details p.33 details p.50 To be taken to the additional text for each piece simply Etruscan kantharos p.7 Roman sarcophagus fragment p.12 click on the arrow icon details p.34 details p.51 When viewing videos Faliscan incised stamnos p.7 Roman inscription fragment p.12 you will be taken to details p.35 details p.52 our YouTube channel Villanovan kantharos with rams p.7 Roman inscription fragment p.12 details p.36 details p.53 Luristan finial with confronting caprids p.8 Egyptian shabti for Huy p.13 details p.37 details p.54 Roman sculpture of a tree and snake p.8 Egyptian shabti p.13 details p.38 details p.55 Persian ribbed sword blade p.8 Egyptian shabti for Tious p.13 details p.39 details p.56 European incised dagger p.8 Egyptian shabti for Iahmes p.13 details p.40 details p.57 Greek head of a woman, perhaps Omphale Medma p.9 Egyptian shabti for Neferibresaneith p.13 details p.41 details p.58 Greek head of a young woman p.9 Egyptian shabti for Padineith p.13 details p.42 details p.59 Greek head of a male banqueter, possibly Dionysus p.9 Cypriot Bichrome Ware amphora p.14 details p.43 details p.60 Greek head of a woman with a topknot p.9 Cypriot Bichrome Red Ware amphora p.14 details p.44 details p.61 Greek head of youth with Phrygian helmet p.9 Greek kantharos p.14 details p.45 details p.62 Nine Roman unguentaria p.10 Coptic textile fragment with the Tree of Life p.14 details p.46 details p.63 2 COLLECTING To paraphrase L.P. Hartley, the past is another country, but it’s a years earlier. One could say that although ancient artifacts must and goddesses, gravestones and reliefs, displayed within temples country that still excites our interest. It’s a place we want to visit and have been collected in the artisans’ workplaces, it was as much the and classically inspired buildings, the lawns and trees planted as THE PAST need to understand, we feel we have roots and connections there. allure of Egypt’s past achievements and its long-established stability, memories of the Roman campagna, theoretical reconstructions Yet like a mirage, whenever we get close it seems to retreat before that was acquired as a bolster to more uncertain times. of the villa of Pliny, or re-imaginings of the Roman past. These us, intangible, elusive. gardens, some of which still survive, established an architectural For the later Egyptians it was knowledge that was collected. It was and horticultural tradition still pertinent today. “Antiquities are history defaced, or But if the past, our ancient world, is another country, are the probably Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309/8–246 BC) who established some remnants of history which have things that remain - Bacon’s ‘remnants’ - simply souvenirs? I in Alexandria what Timon of Phlius called “the chicken-coop of My own introduction to the ancient world came in my teenage casually escaped the shipwreck of time” would say no, for antiquities can be not only a conduit into our the Muses”, the Library and Museum (literally the Temple of the years when I lived close to a garden designed by the great Palladian distant past, but also an aid to help us understand and amplify our Muses), where both the accumulated knowledge of the past was architect William Kent. One summer the owner lent me a key which The Advancement of Learning present. At some essential level, the ancient world and we are more stored, and the great minds of the day would meet. They saw the allowed private access at will. Through a door in the boundary wall, Francis Bacon, 1605 similar than different. As A.E Housman wrote in “On Wenlock past as a springboard to the here and now. and set within an English riverine landscape, a classical Elysium Edge”, we and the ancient Roman have stood in the same places had been created, redolent of the painted landscapes of Claude or and stared at the same things, the same wooded hills tossed and This borrowing from the past continued in later times. From the Poussin. Here the passion for the past felt by Cicero was echoed blown by the wind. The same blood warms us, we feel the same second century BC onwards, victorious Romans brought back to over seventeen hundred years later by Kent for his friend, a retired hurt in often troubled lives: “The tree of man was never quiet: Italy a mass of sculpture and artifacts from the conquered cities soldier and companion of Lord Burlington, and the Augustan Then ‘twas the Roman now ‘tis I.” of the Greek East. Their elite developed a passion for collecting poet Alexander Pope. Inside, and more pertinently, outside of the Greek material culture to indicate their part in the conquering house, in glades and wooded dells, Kent had arranged the general’s Today, we live in a world that can seem overwhelming, and artificial class. Not only were genuine ancient works of art acquired but also collection of Roman sculpture, both ancient and contemporary. It to the point of disorientation. We are surrounded by superficiality contemporary copies were commissioned. was another friend, the writer, aesthete and antiquarian, Horace and beguiled by surface appearance, where everything conceivable is Walpole, who wrote that the place had “the sweetest little groves, subject to branding by global enterprises. Searching for authenticity The Roman statesman Cicero (106-43 BC) had long been aware of streams, glades, porticoes, cascades, and river, imaginable; all the we capture images of ourselves in front of famous sights, next to the Greek art and had undoubtedly been surrounded by examples in scenes are perfectly classic.” Mona Lisa maybe, or in St Mark’s Square, as if to say, ‘I am here, I Rome where, after the sack of Corinth, much of the public sculpture exist’. The selfie has become the signifier of being ‘here’, here where was booty from the recent wars. In a letter, Cicero tasks his friend Placed within a small temple, one of several classical buildings ‘it’ matters. But the ease of access (and the glutinous selfie-craving) Atticus to buy almost any type of Greek sculpture for his villa in Kent designed for the garden, is an ancient Roman cinerarium. maybe indicates that even thus recorded, the event is experienced Tusculum, where the public spaces were decorated to give a sense One day, in this semi-sacred space, partly Rome and yet wholly at a remove. We want more, we want to know who we are, so we of the admired Greeks (Cicero had lived in Athens for a while). The England, I sat for a few minutes next to the marble urn, both of look to the past. artistic quality of the individual pieces seems to have been of hardly us surrounded by the same Oxfordshire air, and my finger traced prime importance, it was their ‘Greekness’ that was desired. This the engraved letters on the dedicatory tablet. At that moment, next Collectors collect for differently shaded reasons, but perhaps ostentatious display of Hellenistic sophistication reached an apogee to the familiar river where I had learnt to swim, I was transported we can say that the history of collecting is a desire to own the with Hadrian (76-138 AD), who brought to his villa at Tivoli works to the ancient world, and a complex, atmospheric dialogue opened authentic, the true, or to at least ally oneself with a past that is of art from ancient Greece and Egypt, as well as commissioning up between me and the past. different, more commendable, nobler or (for some) more powerful sculptures in an ancient style. and mighty. It seems that each era, indeed each of us, comes to the I think it fair to say that art at its most essential shows us ourselves ancient world by our own route and for our own reasons, and the However, it was in the Renaissance during the rediscovery of ancient and how we live, but ancient art, these glimpses into the past, can history of collecting reflects this. Rome that the serious, one could say deeply competitive, modern offer us something in addition, something provocative, but maybe history of collecting as a connoisseur began. As workmen began to also protective, consoling. We can see the poetry of the fragment, If you visit Sigmund Freud’s museum in Hampstead, you will see unearth marble sculptures and the decorative remains of splendid and understand that the patina of age, the wear and damages each arranged across his desk, dozens of ancient bronzes of gods and buildings, the discoveries were fiercely fought over by popes and piece exhibits, are a result of the process of time. The scratched, goddesses from Egypt, Greece and Rome. They must have formed cardinals for their collections. Even Michelangelo was involved in eroded surfaces, the accidental or sometimes deliberate defacements, part of a constant communion he had with the past.