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49 pp; 40 plates; 123 illus. Original stiff wrappers. Near Fine. 'While New York merchant Milton Weil was far less rich than J. Pierpont Morgan, the Museum's greatest benefactor, Weil had the good sense to specialize. It was he who founded the twentieth century's most important collection of cameos. Weil's treasures became the foundation of the Museum's holdings. At Weil's death in 1934, his obituary in the Herald Tribune announced: 'Milton Weil, 59, Cameo Expert, Financer, Dies.' The subheads 'Had Stock Exchange Seat' and 'Sold it within Two Years at Profit of $125,000' were followed by a quote from Weil: ' 'And that,' he told his friends after retiring to pursue his hobby, 'is a lot of cameos' ' (James David Draper, 'Cameo Appearances', Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays, Met Museum Web site, August 2008). 'So precociously brilliant was his mind that while at the Gymnasium, at fourteen, he was permitted to attend seminars on the history of art at the University of Vienna. He obtained his Ph.D. in History of Art at the age of twenty-two and soon afterwards was appointed a Curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. His numerous publications in that field are highly regarded by specialists, and his book The Art of Gem Engraving During the Italian Renaissance remains a standard work on the subject. His reputation was such that in 1929 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City invited him to study the Milton Weil Collection of Postclassical Cameos and to write the catalogue for it' (Rudolph Loewenstein, 'Ernst Kris, Ph.D-1900-1957', Bulletin of the American Psychoanalytical Association, 13, pp. 741-743, 1957). Seller Inventory # 25149
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