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‘Un monument si beau et si rare’: drawings of the tomb of the Nasonii formerly in the collection of Colbert

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

Claire Pace
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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 67 , November 1999 , pp. 323 - 352
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Copyright © British School at Rome 1999

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References

1 I am most grateful to Dr Helen Whitehouse for her comments on a draft of this paper, and for kindly allowing me to read her own notes on the volume, as well as a draft of her exemplary catalogue of the drawings of the tomb of the Nasonii from the Dal Pozzo Collection at Windsor. This catalogue (here abbreviated as Dal Pozzo cat.) should be consulted for a full account of the archaeology and iconography of the tomb. Thanks are also due to the Holkham Estate, to the staff of the Print Room, Royal Library, Windsor, and to Dr David Wright for kindly allowing me to see his notes on the album. I am grateful, too, to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Glasgow for providing a grant towards photographs, and to David Weston, Keeper of Special Collections, Glasgow University Library.

2 Perrault, C., Les hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant ce siècle (1690) I, 38Google Scholar; Brice, G., Description nouvelle de ce qu'il y a de plus remarquable dans la ville de Paris (Paris, 1685), 87Google Scholar. The first description occurs in Olivier, E. and Hermal, G., Manuel de l'amateur de relieures armoriées (Paris, 1928), XIIIGoogle Scholar. The standard works of reference for Colbert's library are de la Roncière, C., Catalogue des manuscrits des cinq cents de Colbert (Paris, 1908)Google Scholar; de la Roncière, C., with Bondois, P., Catalogue des manuscrits de la collection des mélanges de Colbert, 2 vols (Paris, 1920–1922)Google Scholar. Colbert's correspondence was published in ten volumes by Clément, P., Lettres, instructions et mémoires (Paris, 1861–1882)Google Scholar. See also the exhibition, Colbert (Paris, Hôtel de la Monnaie, 1983)Google Scholar. Colbert's library was also singled out for praise by Lister, Martin :‘It is the neatest Library in Paris, very large, and exceedingly well furnish'd… The Manuscript Library … is the choicest of that kind in Paris …’ (Journey to Paris (London, 1699), 128)Google Scholar.

3 I am grateful to David Weston for supplying this information.

4 The date is written on p. 84.

5 Cf Briquet, C.M., Les Filigranes (Leipzig, 1923), IIGoogle Scholar, no. 7628: ‘premier spécimen d'une marque qui se retrouve jusque vers la fin du 17e siècle à Fabian et dans toute l'Italie centrale et méridionale’.

6 Cf. Briquet, Les Filigranes (above, n. 5), I, 40–1: ‘Les nombreux types de l'ancre dans un cercle sont tous italiens … une étoile surmonte l'ancre dans le groupe 477 à 532 …’. Within this group, numbers 489, 491 and 492 seem particularly close; these Briquet attributes ‘plus volontiers’ to central Italy.

7 The chaplet occurs in Heawood, E., Watermarks, mainly of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Monumenta Chartae Papyraceae) (Hilversum, 1950)Google Scholar, nos. 222–46. The closest that I have found in Briquet, is the ‘croix inscrite dans un cercle’, again identified as Italian (Briquet, Les Filigranes (above, n. 5), II, nos. 5572–7, citing in particular examples from Rome, Naples and Florence).

8 Other seventeenth-century copies, chiefly by Pietro Santi Bartoli or his son Francesco, and eighteenth-century versions by, for example, Piccini, may be found at Windsor, Holkham, Eton and Glasgow, as well as in Rome itself (see below). Whitehouse has provided a lucid analysis of the drawings at Windsor, from the Pozzo collection — Whitehouse, H., ‘Copies of Roman paintings and mosaics in the Paper Museum’, in Cassiano dal Pozzo's Paper Museum I (Quaderni Puteani 2)Google Scholar, and more recently has compared the drawings in Paris and Windsor with a group in the RIBA Library, London (‘Pitture miniate’, forthcoming). Her forthcoming catalogue of the Cassiano dal Pozzo collection (Dal Pozzo cat.) at Windsor gives a comprehensive account of the various examples of the drawings based on the tomb of the Nasonii.

9 The Bartoli drawings which Caylus once owned are now located in the Réserve of the Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque nationale (Gd.9.b. Rés. fol). The facsimile volume was published in 1757 as Recueil de peintures antiques, imitées fidelement d'après les desseins coloriés faits par Pietre-Sainte Bartoli; a second edition appeared in 1783 (it may also be found in the Cabinet des Estampes, Gd.10.Rés). For an estimation of the importance of the volumes, cf. de Villechenon, M.-N. Pino, ‘Fortune des fresques antiques de Rome au 18e siècle’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 30 (Oct. 1990), 105ff.Google Scholar However, the author appears to confuse paintings from the tomb of the Nasonii with others from an excavation in the Vigna Corsini (p. 107 and fig. 4). See also Whitehouse, ‘Pitture miniate’ (above, n. 8).

10 Cf. Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1).

11 Cf. Messineo, G., La Via Flaminia da Porta del Popolo a Malborghetto (Rome, 1991), 96–112Google Scholar, figs 118–34.

12 Winckelmann reported that only one of the panels was visible in the eighteenth century; cf. Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1); Trapp, J.B., ‘Ovid's Tomb’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973), 35–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Cf. Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1). The paintings in the British Museum are reproduced in Hinks, R., Catalogue of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Paintings and Mosaics in the Department of Antiquities, the British Museum (London, 1933)Google Scholar; cf. also Andreae, B., Studien zur Römischen Grabkunst (RM Erzgänzungsheft 9) (Heidelberg, 1963), 88–130Google Scholar; Messineo, La Via Flaminia (above, n. 11).

14 Le pitture antiche del sepolcro dei Nasonij nella Via Flaminia (hereafter Sep.Nas.) (Rome, 1680)Google Scholar.

15 The preparatory sketches are now at Windsor (‘Vittoria’ Album, vol. 175, RL 9607–43). The watercolours are contained in a volume after Roman paintings and mosaics, purchased from the Massimi family in the eighteenth century, and formerly in the collection of Sir Richard Mead. It is highly probable that Mead's volume is identical with one now in Glasgow, Special Collections (MS Gen. 1496); for a description of these drawings by the present writer, cf. Papers of the British School at Rome 47 (1979), 117–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Le pitture antiche delle grotte di Roma e del sepolcro dei Nasonij disegnate e intagliate … dal Pietro Sand Bartoli e Francesco Bartoli … descritte e illustrate da Gio. Pietro Bellori e Michelangelo della Causei dela Chausse (Rome, 1706)Google Scholar; later editions, from 1738, included nineteen additional engravings. See Whitehouse, H., ‘The rebirth of Adonis’, Papers of the British School at Rome 63 (1995), 215–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the rediscovery of one of the original paintings on which Bartoli's drawing was based; cf. also Whitehouse, ‘Copies of Roman paintings and mosaics’ (above, n. 8) for copies in Cassiano's collection, now in the Royal Library, Windsor.

17 Francesco Bartoli (c. 1675–c. 1730); the drawings, the property of the Earl of Leicester, were collected by Thomas Coke when on the Grand Tour in Italy; cf. Ashby, T., ‘Drawings of ancient paintings in English collections. II–IV’, Papers of the British School at Rome 8 (1916), 35–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 The drawings made for Dal Pozzo are contained in the ‘Nettuno’ Album (RL 11430–11475); cf. Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1).

19 Cf. Trapp, ‘Ovid's tomb’ (above, n. 12).

20 Sep.Nas., p. 12 (1726 ed., p. 30).

21 Caylus, Recueil de peintures antiques (above, n. 9), ‘Avertissement’, 7–8.

22 Sep.Nas., p. 14

23 Cf. Messineo, La Via Flaminia (above, n. 11), 107: ‘… è vano cercare nella decorazione pittorica della tomba, così come nella maggior parte dei monumenti funerari romani, un preciso programma con rispondenza e successione di determinate simbologie; si tratta soltanto di una raccolta di esempi mitologici che assicurano la sopravivenza dopo la morte e la speranza di un luogo di beatitudine’.

24 Cf. Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1).

25 Letter of 6 Sept 1669; cited by de Montaiglon, Anatole, Correspondance des directeurs de l'Académie de France à Rome I (Paris, 1887), 123–4Google Scholar (no. 37).

26 Letter to Errard, of 23 July 1672; de Montaiglon, Correspondance (above, n. 25), 36 (no. 66).

27 Letter to Coypel, of 23 June 1673; de Montaiglon, Correspondance (above, n. 25), 47–8 (no 83).

28 Letter to Bernini of 28 June 1671; cited in Clément, Lettres, instructions et mémoires (above, n. 2) VII, 55, no. 65.

29 Paris, Bibl. Nat., département de MSS., Fonds Baluze 101.

30 ‘Suite de l'inventaire de Monseigneur Colbert’, vol. 77 of the ‘Mélanges Colbert’. BN Dept de MSS. Cf. De la Roncière, Catalogue des manuscripts des cinq cents (above, n. 2) and De la Roncière and Bondois, Catalogue (above, n. 2).

31 Cf. Thuillier, J., ‘Pour Charles Errard, peintre’, Revue de l'Art 11–12 (1978), 157–70Google Scholar.

32 Cf. Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1).

33 See, for example, the illustration of the ‘Rape of Europa’ (Fig. 6) (p. 35 of the album).

34 See now Fusconi, G., La fortuna delle ‘Nozze Aldobrandini’ (Studi e Testi 363) (Vatican City, 1994)Google Scholar. Previously the date of discovery had been supposed to be 1606. See also Joyce, H., ‘Grasping at shadows’, Art Bulletin 74 (1992), 219–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 The passage runs: ‘Depuis que jay escrit ce qui est cy devant l'on m'a donné un discours Italien pareil à celuy qui a esté envoyé à Paris. Il y a seulement cecy de plus escrit en Italien ainsi qu'il en suit…’.

36 I am grateful to Helen Whitehouse for providing this reference: BAV Cod. Vat. 9136, fols 56–57r. This (and the version in the Massimi library) are likely to be copies after a lost original eyewitness account, made soon after the discovery of the tomb.

37 The account in the Massimi archives is now in the Biblioteca Angelica, Ms. 1678, fols 98r–v, 108; cf. Pomponi, M., in Buonocore, M. (ed.), Camillo Massimi, collezionista di antichità (Xenia Antiqua Monogrqfie) (Rome, 1996), 82Google Scholar; Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1). The judgement as to the aesthetic quality of the frescoes is harsher in this version of the text (Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat.) (above, n. 1).

38 Cf. Whitehouse, Dal Pozzo cat. (above, n. 1).