Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art): Volumes 1 and 2 - Hardcover

I Bignamini; C Hornsby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300160437 ISBN 13: 9780300160437

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2010

Synopsis

This important and long-awaited book offers the first overview of all British-led excavation sites in and around Rome in the Golden Age of the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century. Based on work carried out by the late Ilaria Bignamini, the authors have undertaken the monumental task of tracing sculptures and other works of art that are currently in public collections around the world from their original find sites via the dealers and entrepreneurs to the private collectors in Britain. In the first of two extensively illustrated volumes, approximately fifty sites, each located by maps, are analysed in historical and topographical detail, supported by fifty newly written and researched biographies of the major names in the Anglo-Italian world of dealing and collecting. Essays by Bignamini and Hornsby introduce the field of study and elucidate the complex bureaucracy of the relevant departments of the Papal courts. The second volume of the books is a collection of hundreds of letters from the dealers and excavators abroad to collectors in England, offering a rich source of information about all aspects of the art market at the time. The book is an invaluable resource for scholars working in a rapidly expanding area where European art and cultural history meets archaeology.

About this title

About the Author

Ilaria Bignamini was an historian of art and archeology. Clare Hornsby is Research Fellow at the British School at Rome.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300160437
• ISBN 13: 9780300160437
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 630