Academy research project

Antiquitatum Thesaurus: Antiquities in European Visual Sources from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Module 2 - Peripheries

Challenges of the Peripheries and New Centres: Antiquities in Asia Minor and the European ‘Provinces’

Richard Pococke (1704–1765)
A description of the East and some other countries, 2 vols., London 1743–1745
(ill. from the German edition, 1771)

Module 2 takes a look at the peripheries of the Roman Empire and assesses travel reports and sources, some of them used well into the nineteenth century, on antiquities in Asia Minor and the Near East, and in Spain and France, including the travel sketches of Jacob Spon and Giovanni Battista Borra’s preliminary drawings for his publication on the buildings and structures at Baalbek and Palmyra, as well as Richard Pococke’s ‘Description of the East’. There is to date, for instance, no compilation of sources or study on a broader material basis that would facilitate keeping track of the processes of transformation to which ancient objects viewed on travels were subjected prior to their publication.

Select Sources

♦ John Aubrey, Monumenta Britannica (1665-93), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Top. Gen. c. 24 und c. 25

♦ Joseph Boy, Recopilacion sussinta de las antigüedades romanas que se allan del tiempo de los emperadores romanos en la ciudad de Taragona y sus ercanias (1713), Biblioteca del Museo Nacional Arqueológico; copies in Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Ms. 742 and Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, Ms. 9-25-4-C-70

♦ Jacques Carrey, Temple de Minerve à Athènes, dessiné par ordre de M. de Nointel, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, RESERVE-FOL-FC-3 (A)

♦ Comte de Caylus, Dessins originaux de monuments construits par les Romains dans les Gaules levés par les ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, VE-2-FOL

♦ Roger de Gaignières, Antiquités de la Gaule, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, VE-3-FOL

♦ Manuel Díaz de Ayora, 3 drawings of objects from the collection of antiquities of Guillermo Tyrry, Marqués de la Canada, Sevilla, Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina

♦ Jacob Spon, Recueil de dessins d’après l’antique (1678), Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, RESERVE FB-18 (B)-4

♦ Giovanni Battista Borra, preparatory drawings of Robert Wood's The Ruins of Palmyra and The ruins of Balbec (1750/51), London, RIBA

♦ Giovanni Battista Borra, drawings and watercolours of Rome and from the journey to Palmyra and Baalbek, New Haven, Yale University, Center for Studies in British Art, Paul Mellon Collection