Antiquities in Motion: From Excavation Sites to Renaissance Collections

An exciting new approach to understanding the trade of antiquities in early modern Rome traces the journey of objects from discovery to display. Barbara Furlotti presents a dynamic interpretation of the early modern market for antiquities, relying on the innovative notion of archaeological finds as mobile items. She reconstructs the journey of ancient objects from digging sites to venues where they were sold, such as Roman marketplaces and antiquarians’ storage spaces; to sculptors’ workshops, where they were restored; and to Italian and other European collections, where they arrived after complicated and costly travel over land and sea. She shifts the attention from collectors to peasants with shovels, dealers and middlemen, and restorers who unearthed, cleaned up, and repaired or remade objects, recuperating the roles these actors played in Rome’s socioeconomic structure.
 
Furlotti also examines the changes in economic value, meaning, and appearance that antiquities underwent as they moved throughout their journeys and as they reached the locations in which they were displayed. Drawing on vast unpublished archival material, she offers answers to novel questions: How were antiquities excavated? How and where were they traded? How were laws about the ownership of ancient finds made, followed, and evaded?
 

• Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum
• Michelangelo: Mind of the Master
• edited by: Collecting and Empires: The Impact of Empires on Collections and Museums from Antiquity to the Present (Collectors and Dealers)
• Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence
• The Last Knight: The Art, Armor, and Ambition of Maximilian I
• London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, 1780-1820 (Issues & Debates)
• Gothic Sculpture (The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)
• Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts
• Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
• The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East