Beschreibung:

HANCARVILLE, Pierre-François Hugues, called d'Hancarville (1719-1805). Antiquités Etrusques, Grecques et Romaines. Tirées du cabinet de M. Hamilton. ( Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Honble. Wm. Hamilton .) Naples: François Morelli, 1766-7. 4 volumes, large 2° (365 x 467mm). Parallel text in French and English (vols. I and II). 8 hand-coloured engraved titles in French and English, 5 engraved dedications (two in vol. II), 32 etched vignette head- and tailpieces (including 5 printed in colour and 1 hand-coloured in vol. IV, and 1 hand-finished in red in vol. III), 40 etched decorative initials (including 10 colour-printed in vol. IV) and 437 ETCHED AND ENGRAVED PLATES, INCLUDING 183 HAND-COLOURED, 75 double-page. (Stain to lower margin in vol. III affecting about a dozen plates including the French title, very slight surface damage to both titles in this volume and one plate with tear along right-hand edge of platemark, one plate in vol. IV with platemark just shaved at right-hand margin, not affecting image.) Contemporary French mottled calf gilt, the covers with small central Botfield armorial, added later, the spine in seven compartments with raised bands, morocco lettering-pieces (one red, one green) onlaid in two, the others with floral and foliate decoration (lower corner of back cover of vol. I a little rubbed, some corners very slightly bumped). A FINE COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS LAVISH WORK, which was limited to only 500 copies. This was indeed an "edition splendide et de grand luxe" (Cohen-de Ricci): Hamilton imported the type from Venice, and the production of the work cost him around (6,000. The plates are by C. Pignatari, C. Nolli, A. Cardo and A. Lamberti after Giuseppe Bracci Edmondo Beaulieu Pio. Bat. Tierce and others, and record Hamilton's first collection of vases. The nucleus of this was the group of vases belonging to the Porcarini family, bought by Hamilton in 1766. Hamilton began collecting vases soon after his arrival in Naples as envoy in 1764, and had amassed 730 of them, as well as numerous specimens of glass, coins, bronzes and terracottas, by the time he sold the collection to the British Museum in 1772: it was purchased with a parliamentary grant of (8,400, and formed the basis of the present Department of Greek and Roman antiquities. Hugues, who had worked with the German antiquary Johann Winckelmann to whom volume II is dedicated, acted as Hamilton's agent in forming the collection. Hamilton became his patron, finding in Hugues "l'érudition d'un savant et le talent d'un artiste" ( Nouvelle Biographie Générale ), and believing in what the DNB describes as his "fanciful theories". However, although Hamilton took some interest in the various hypotheses relating to the history of classical art, he saw his vase collection above all as a stimulus for modern design. He circulated many of the plates in their proof states, and some were lent to Josiah Wedgwood on whom they were an important early influence. A French edition of the work was published in Paris, 1785-1788, and an Italian edition in Florence in 1801-1808. Blackmer 845 (435 plates only); Cohen-de Ricci 474; Berlin. Kat. 890; Brunet I, 321; Vinet 1528; Cicognara (Florence 1801-8 edition only) 2490. (4)