Print Collecting in Rome, Paris, and London in the Early Eighteenth Century

Author(s): Antony Griffiths

Source: Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin , Spring, 1994, Vol. 2, No. 3, Print
Collecting (Spring, 1994), pp. 37-58
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College on behalf of the Harvard
Art Museums

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4301495

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4301495?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

and Harvard Art Museums are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Print Collecting in Rome, Paris, and London
in the Early Eighteenth Century
Antony Griffiths
I n recent years the Fogg Art Museum has
art. Such collections were formed in the first
become a home to studies on print collecting:
William Robinson wrote the pioneering essay
on northern European print collecting in the
seventeenth century, and Marjorie Cohn has
made a major contribution to the study of
eighteenth-century collecting in her catalogue
of the exhibition devoted to the Spencer al-
bums.' Yet, despite this and much other work,
the study of the subject is still in its infancy,
and the broad outlines of its history in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have yet
to be established. In these circumstances,
rather than concentrate on one particular
collection or on one single aspect, I thought
it might be more interesting here to attempt
a broad survey across Europe. But I must
stress that the attempt is premature, and that
my conclusions will be very tentative indeed.
This essay will center on the early decades
of the eighteenth century. This was a period
when the world of high connoisseurship and
collecting showed a preoccupation with draw-
ings and prints that was entirely new. The
great figures were Crozat and Mariette in
Paris; Zanetti in Venice; Gabburri in Florence;
the 2nd Duke of Devonshire, Pond, and the
Richardsons in England; and Zomer in Hol-
land; almost all these men knew each other
personally, and many of them exchanged
lengthy correspondences. This is the back-
ground to a pattern of print collecting that is
surprisingly uniform across Europe, although
avec changements, if I may borrow the term
used in the eighteenth century to distinguish
different states of the same print.
The most pronounced feature of these collec-
tions was their enormous size. They were not
"encyclopedic" in the seventeenth-century
sense: that is, they did not aim to cover the
whole range of human knowledge. Instead
they were focused specifically on the history of
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
37
place by art-loving princes, and these are the
founding years of many of the great cabinets
of the present day. Prince Eugene of Savoy's
collection forms half of the present Albertina
in Vienna; Augustus the Strong of Saxony's
collection is now in the Kupferstichkabinett
in Dresden; Benedict XIV's collection is now
in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna.
But I wish to begin with a much less familiar
figure-King John V of Portugal (or Dom
Jodo V, to give him his Portuguese title). His
collection was in some respects the greatest
of the time, and its rediscovery thanks to the
research of Marie-Therese Mandroux-FranSa
in Paris and Lisbon is one of the more exciting
stories of recent years. John V was fabulously
wealthy from the gold and precious stones of
Brazil, and used his money to reorient Portu-
gal towards the center of European culture.
For his libraries he sent to France and Hol-
land; for his cathedral and its fittings he sent
to Rome, from where his architects brought
back not only specially commissioned objects,
but also piles of drawings that would be one
of the prime sources for the history of Italian
decorative art of the time had they survived.2
But the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake and
fire of 1755, five years after John's death, put
an end to these ambitions as well as to the
print collection, which was thought to have
been completely destroyed. However in 1986
Mandroux-Franca published her discovery
in Lisbon, in the library of the National
Academy of Fine Arts, of one of his albums
of prints, the second volume of the work
of Jean Berain.3 It contains ninety-six sheets
with prints inside a splendid binding by the
celebrated Parisian binder Jean-Antoine
Padeloup, and manuscript title pages in both
French and Portuguese. She also found in the
archives documents that revealed the signifi-
cance of her discovery.
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994

38 in short, no difference in the principle of

On 12 July 1724 the Portuguese ambassador
in Paris was instructed to order onarrangement
the king's between the Berain and Callot
behalf one impression of all the prints
albums.pro-
This followed the standard pattern
duced in France during the previous thirty
in France. In June 1727 the famous collector
years. In January 1725 the order was extended
Dezallier d'Argenville published a rather
to one impression of all the prints polemical
made in letter on the arrangement of a
France since the origins of printmaking.
collection To
in the Mercure de France.4 In this
fulfill this astonishing demand, the
he ambassa-
makes a chance remark that all the print
dor turned to the Mariette firm, run by
dealers in Jean
Paris arranged their stock by
and his son Pierre-Jean. Despite having made maltre (master) rather than by subject, and
up a similar gigantic order for Eugene of that most collectors went about their busi-
Savoy eight years before, they were capable ness by forming oeuvres of each maltre. So
of meeting this command. By the end of 1728 the Mariettes, faced with this extraordinary
the project was complete. It comprised nearly order from Portugal, simply went through
150 volumes which were inlaid, bound, and their stock and sent out a selection arranged
indexed for dispatch to Portugal. Another in the same way.
stroke of luck enabled Mandroux-Franca to
reconstruct the contents of the entire collec- On the same day as he placed his order in
tion. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris has Paris, John V placed orders with his ambassa-
long contained the famous Notes Manuscrites dors in Madrid, The Hague, and London for
of Pierre-Jean Mariette, which comprise vari- impressions of all the prints published in
ous lists of prints by and after many artists. those countries, but again without any further
By comparing the contents of John V's Berain directions as to arrangement or type. Each
album with the Berains in Mariette's list, she ambassador was left to interpret it as best he
discovered that they were identical. This has could, with help from his local agents. Infor-
enabled her to reconstruct what was sent to mation on the results is fragmentary. The
Lisbon, and she is now working towards the agent in the Netherlands was the Count of
publication of the complete list. Tarouca, who was himself a great collector
and a close friend of Eugene of Savoy. He
From the point of view of this essay, the im- found the order impossibly vague, and filed
portant fact that emerges is that the whole long lists of queries back to Lisbon, with the
collection was arranged according to designer. result that nothing had been done by 1728
In other words, the Berain volume contains when he left Holland.
designs by Berain, and in the same way the
Callot albums contained designs by Callot. However, the Lisbon archives show that the
Since Berain made few prints himself, most ambassador in London did indeed supply a
of the prints in the Lisbon album were made collection in forty-two volumes. But nothing
by others after his designs. On the other was known of its contents until early in 1989,
hand, Callot was himself an etcher, so the when Mandroux-Franca was watching tele-
Callot album would have contained only a vision at home one evening and saw on the
few prints made by anyone else. To our mod- screen a large album, with the arms of John V,
ern eyes this makes a huge difference, since being advertised for auction the following day.
we now lay stress on the printmaker, not the This turned out to be one of the volumes
designer; but in 1725 it did not. There was, delivered from London, and it was bought

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

39

4~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~:

-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~L

-4 ~ ~ ~ v

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994
40 for the Portuguese national collection.5 The
binding is English, and so is the specially en-
graved frontispiece-cum-title page, which
shows the old royal palace in Lisbon. Added
in manuscript is a Latin text, which explains
that this is a "Miscellaneous collection of
Natural History, so that John V, a pursuer
of the sciences, might contemplate all living
things from the largest to the smallest, the
countless variety of creation, and the cun-
ning workmanship of divine omnipotence."6
The date is 1725. Inside there is nothing so
grand as we find in the Mariette volumes:
it contains simply a set of the plates from
Eleazar Alvin's Natural History of British
Insects, published in London in 1720, in the
edition hand-colored by the author himself.
We can sympathize with the ambassador's
predicament in trying to decide what to buy;
print publishing in London in the 1720S was
very primitive by Continental standards, and
it must have seemed very odd for anyone
abroad to want to buy English prints. The
safest course was to stick to scientific or
technical illustrations; John V had already
placed large orders for scientific and preci-
sion instruments in London, and this was
the field in which the British had an inter-
national reputation.
One curious gap in the documents so far
discovered in Lisbon is any mention of prints
from Rome. But a Portuguese scholar writing
in 1934 mentioned that he had seen an album
of Italian prints made for John V, and by an
extraordinary chance this reappeared at an
auction in the summer of 1992 in London.7
When miscellaneous albums reach the market
today, they are almost invariably broken up,
and it was only because Mandroux-Franca's
publications had revealed its significance that
it could be bought and offered to the Portu-
guese authorities. It has now returned to re-
join its fellows in Lisbon.
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The volume has not yet been published, and
must therefore be briefly described. The red
leather binding has identical gold tooling
on the front and back, with the Portuguese
royal arms in the center and the monogram
of John V in the corners (fig. 1). Inside is a
calligraphic title page that states that the
volume contains the works of four late six-
teenth-century Italian artists: Federico
Barocci, Cherubino Alberti, the Cavaliere
d'Arpino, and Vespasiano Strada. Following
this comes a separate title page for the works
of Barocci, dated Rome 1727 (fig. 2). In the
center of this is the figure of Fame with the
arms of John V, specially engraved by Giro-
lamo Frezza for these volumes and printed
in red ink, which is repeated in the title pages
to each of the following sections. Then come
several pages of very fine calligraphy, listing
the prints of Barocci (fig. 3). Finally come
the prints themselves, arranged in icono-
graphical order, with the prints on biblical
or religious subjects preceding those on pro-
fane subjects. The same pattern of title page
and list of contents is followed for the three
later artists.
A few of the larger prints are bound in as
whole sheets, but most are let into blank
sheets of white paper. Where the print still
had margins, glue was added to the front of
the margin and the framing sheet was pasted
on top of it. Where there were no margins, the
window was cut smaller than the print, and
the glue was applied around the back edge of
the print itself. Where the print was too large,
it was either folded in or bound in over two
folios. Small prints were usually given a page
each, and only occasionally doubled up. At
the center of the overlap on the verso of each
print is a small monogram in pen and ink:
"JB". This was most likely added by the man
who assembled the albums, but I have no idea
who he was.
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

What now of its contents? The section on

In the French and English volumes the prints 41

are simply pasted onto complete backing
sheets rather than inlaid. Inlays seem to be
characteristic of Italian collections and, on
the evidence so far available, are a pointer-
though very far from a certain one-to an
Italian provenance. The albums of prints of
the famous Roman collector Cassiano dal
Pozzo, which were certainly assembled
Figure 2 before his death in 1657, are most beautifully
Barocci contained fifty-nine prints, but to the
print trade in 1992 the only ones of any inter-
est were the four that Barocci etched himself.
It is because the album contained all four
of these that it fetched as much as it did-
?14,000. But there is no sign in the album
that these prints were given any special status
at all-far from it. They are scattered through
the pages, depending on their position in the Figure 3

John V album. John V album.

inlaid, and the centimeter of overlap at the biblical sequence. In the case of the Annuncia-
Title page for First sheet of list
back of each print was carefully burnished tion, with which the album begins, a reversed of contents for
section on

Federico down in order to avoid the sharp edge of the copy by Philippe Thomassin actually precedes Barocci section,

550 x 390 mm.

Barocci, 550 x paper embossing into the print below.8 No the original etching by Barocci himself. This
Ajuda Library,
390 mm. Ajuda
such burnishing is to be seen in the John V cannot be put down as a mistake since the
Library, Lisbon Lisbon (photo-
album, which in this respect is a less careful contents sheet describes them correctly. The graph: British
(photograph:
Br-itish Museum). product. compiler certainly knew what he was doing. Museum).

(IC)

V . . , , . ! ;,~~~ot ...

a -cJ*aaV -

*orn),2a,-elbzo t: :'"
10..
~~~ t. VDwIM
& S.ueII _ ;ki a%n > ...'

^
g' ^ .~~~~a W.M
jpifITh?gP.&4kwk *u#.*d#4cqpLs~3
.X . ..

;.+~~~~~~~~~A
~~ ;" . .'

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994

42 The same (to us) bizarre mixture of original

and reproduction is found throughout the
rest of the album. The Cavaliere d'Arpino
never made a print in his life, so all the prints
in his section are by others after his paintings
or drawings. Conversely, all the prints in the Figure 5
I Cherubino
Vespasiano Strada section are etched by the
artist himself, or are copies of his etchings. / ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ Alberti, Italian,
9 ,. ~~~~~~~553 1615.
The Cherubino Alberti section again includes Putto Holding

a mixture of originals, reproductions, and a, e Banderole.

Engraving (B.
copies in a bewildering sequence. The only
possible conclusion is that although the dis- pro1239), working

167 mm. From

tinction between original and reproduction
was recognised, it was not regarded as of a John V album,
print number 31
much importance. Neither was the difference
in the section on
between prime versions and copies. For
-~r -- + Alberti. Ajuda
Barocci's Rest on the Flight into Egypt we are (j',/ A. i% Library, Lisbon
i . ; < jSi ; ', . ' ~ j (photograph:
presented with an anonymous chiaroscuro
British Museum).
woodcut, followed by another engraved copy,
before we get to the first, and quasi-authorized
engraved version made by Cornelis Cort in version engraved by Cort in 1577. Nor was
1575, which is followed by yet another crude condition thought to be of much importance.
copy. The album contains four versions of There are four versions on successive pages of
Barocci's Madonna of the Cat (in the National prints after Barocci's painting of The Calling

Gallery, London), but none of them is the first of Saint Andrew now in Brussels; none could
be called a good impression, and two of them
are in a shocking state, yellowed, torn, and full
of holes (fig. 4).

Figure 4
Federico Barocci To a modern eye, it is astonishing that prints
(after), Italian, ,
such as these were ever thought worth keep-
1526-161 2. The
ing, much less inlaying and binding into a
Calling of Saint
Andrew. Engrav- grand collection. It might be tempting to
ing (by Raffaello think that the dealer in Rome, Signor JB, was
Guidi, Italian,
unloading unsalable stock on a rich and gull-
1540-c. 16)13),
cut, torn, and ible foreigner. But the collection also contains
squared in black some remarkable rarities, including a work-
chall, 490 x 371
ing proof of an engraving of a cherub by
mm. From a
Cherubino Alberti, corrected by the artist in
John V album,
print number 1 2 pen. An early owner has added the annotation
in the section on "Questa e una prova prima" (This is a first
Barocci. Ajuda
proof) (fig. 5). The album also contains an
Library, Lisbon
(photograph:
extremely rare etching of a fortune-teller that

British Museum). was for many years wrongly thought to be by

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

43

Figure 7

Albrecht Durer,

German, 1471-

1 528. The

Temptation

(detail of fig. 6).

Woodcut, 1 25 x

96 mm. The

National Trust,

Saltram.

piled in a single operation in Rome in the

1750S or 1760S. A few years later, in 1772, they
were sold for t80 to John Parker, the owner
of Saltram, by the artist Angelica Kauffmann.
There are no lists of contents, but the labels
on the spines give the categories by which
the albums are arranged, such as Raphael
and school; Florentine; Maratti and Venetian;
Flemish, German, and Neapolitan; and finally
"Stampe di Miscellanie" (that is, everything
Figure 6 Caravaggio himself.9 If the approach to print else). Within the volumes the sequence is
Page with five
collecting in 1720S Rome had been similar to haphazard to say the least; one print is re-
engraved copies
today's, both of these prints would have been peated three pages later in an impression in
by Marcantonio
Raimondi, taken out and sold separately for high prices. appalling condition, while Ribera prints are
found in both the Neapolitan and Miscella-

.+.
Italian, 1430-

1 534, of Durer's
neous volumes.
Little Passion,

with one wood-

cut by Albrecht The sequence of Durer's woodcuts of the

Durer, German, Little Passion in the German volume consists
1 47 1-1 528.
| would now like to leave John V and intro- almost entirely of late impressions of the en-
From one of the
Saltram albums,
duce another collection, which rests in ten graved copies by Marcantonio, but occasion-
Autori Fiam- uniform volumes on the shelves at Saltram, ally includes an original woodcut (figs. 6, 7).
minghi, Tedeschi,
an English country house just outside Ply- In general the impressions in the Saltram
Napoletani. The
mouth."' One volume contains drawings, albums are late and worn, and often in a con-
National Trust,

Saltram. the other nine prints. To judge from the dition varying from poor to dreadful. Again
bindings and the contents, they were com- we might think that the collection was made

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC2:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994

44 the very enterprising Rossi firm in Rome, who

were among the first anywhere in Europe to
issue catalogues.'2 The successive editions of
zi>
these catalogues, of which the first was in 1677,
never changed their layout; they were always
Figure 8 arranged by designer. And it was the demand
Working proof
for prints from historically minded collectors
of engraving U
that led the Rossi family to commission from
after Carlo
Maratti, Italian, the 1670s onwards so many plates of a new
1625-1713.

Self-Portrait with
I #.lier Italian prints had been after designs rather
kind after the great paintings of the past. Ear-

the Marchese
4<t:
Pallavicini (now
at Stourhead).
From one of the
Saltram albums,
Veneziani e
Scuola di Carlo
Maratta
(fol. 68). The
National Trust,
Saltram.
up as a speculation for sale to a Milord who
knew no better. And again we are defeated by
the insertion of a magnificent working proof
of an engraving after Maratti's self-portrait
with the Marchese Pallavicini (fig. 8). Angelica
Kauffmann was an accomplished printmaker
herself, and had constant communication with
the engravers who worked after her paintings.
She knew what a good print was, and was a
close friend of the Parker family. I regard it as
inconceivable that she was intending to pull
the wool over their eyes.
Early eighteenth-century Italy was a great
center of print collecting, especially among
connoisseurs and dealers who were equally,
or perhaps primarily, interested in paintings
and drawings." Their print collections were
often associated with collections of drawings,
and the arrangement was always suited to the
art historian; they were arranged by artist-
or "master"-to act as picture volumes, as it
were, to accompany the texts of Vasari and
later biographers. This demand was met by
than paintings, and had been aimed primarily
at the artist or collector. It is the late seven-
teenth century that sees the beginning of the
art historian's print.
Nicola Pio, who died in the late 1720s, was
one of the leading connoisseurs and dealers
in Rome in his day. He wrote a set of Lives of
Italian artists which was first printed in 1977,
and he commissioned a well-known set of
portrait drawings of artists to accompany
them.'3 Thirty-four albums of his collection,
out of the original thirty-nine, are now in the
Gabinetto Nazionale in Rome for which they
were purchased in the 1920s.'4 The collection
is arranged by schools and masters: the works
of Raphael fill four volumes, and those of
artists of his school one more. Michelangelo
and the Florentines fill one book, the Carracci
four, and so on for over thirty of the volumes.
A few others at the beginning and end are
arranged on different lines: the German prints
at the beginning are divided into a book of
woodcuts and a book of engravings; and at
the end are a couple of volumes of portraits,
a volume of antiquities, and a volume of land-
scapes. There is also a single volume of draw-
ings, as there was in the Saltram collection.
Pio's prints are trimmed close and pasted
down onto backing sheets, often with drawn
framing lines that frequently cover the borders
of the prints themselves. He often added long
commentaries. The prints are of no great

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

quality either as regards impression or state of tion paid to presenting the works as hand- 45

conservation, and many of the sixteenth- and somely as possible. Zanetti gave his prints
seventeenth-century prints are torn, yellowed, beautiful frames watercolored with a sort of
or squared in chalk. mottled wash.20 Consul Smith laid out his
prints elegantly with gold line borders around
Count Giacomo Carrara, whose collection is each one (fig. 9).
now in his eponymous institute in Bergamo,
was a wealthier man than Pio. He began col- This is a very much higher standard of presen-
lecting in Rome in 1736-39. I know nothing tation and quality than was normal in Italy.
about the arrangement of his collection, and If we ask where this standard came from, the
can find only one print reproduced from it in answer is almost certainly northern Europe.
a general account of the Accademia Carrara Corsini had bought much of his collection
published in i963.'5 It is a Baldung woodcut in his youth between 1716 and 1725 in France,
of the Bewitched Groom with the left corners Holland, and England; his librarian, Bottari,
missing, and with wormholes in the block. If was a correspondent of Pierre-Jean Mariette,
this was the choicest example that could be many of whose letters he published from 1754
found for reproduction, it augurs little for the onwards in his famous collection of letters
quality of the rest. Other Roman collections of
the time do survive. One that I have examined
belonged to the German artist-cum-dealer
Lambert Krahe, who lived in Rome from 1736
to 1756. It is now in the Kunstmuseum in
Dusseldorf, and is the collection of an art
historian. It shows a lack of concern for qual-
ity of impression, or condition, or whether
a print is an original or a copy.16 Another
collection that I have not seen is that of Pope
Benedict XIV, which is now in the Galleria
Nazionale in Bologna.'7

.II I_
_ _ _ 5l/|w_
,,sk 4i
Figure 9
Now I do not wish to give the impression that VW"
John Baptist
Jackson, British,
every Italian collection contained only copies
c. 1701-c. 1774. and prints in shocking condition. One that I
Romulus and have not seen but am told is of notably higher
Remus with the
quality is that of Cardinal Neri Corsini, which
Wolf (Kainen

15); SaintJames
survives divided between the Gabinetto
(Kainen I 1). Nazionale and the Biblioteca Corsiniana in
Whole sheet,
Rome.'8 Two other fine groups of prints were
508 x 364 mm.
in the related collections of Count Anton
From Joseph
Smith's album Maria Zanetti and Consul Joseph Smith in
of chiaroscuro Venice. Recent research has shown that Smith
woodcuts (fol.
is likely to have obtained most of his prints
I5). British
from Zanetti.'9 These two collections only
Museum,
London. survive in fragments, but these show the atten-

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994

46 relating to art.2' Zanetti had made a long tour

of the north in the early 1720S, taking in Paris,
London, and the Netherlands. It was Mariette
who had the greatest influence on him, and
"p

who maintained a correspondence with him

which lasted until Zanetti's death in 1757. So
it is to Mariette's approach to print collecting
that we should now turn.

Figure 10
Jacopo

Tintoretto
(after), Italian,

1518-1594. The
Temptation of
The Spencer albums, which Marjorie Cohn
Saint Anthony.
Engraving has demonstrated were compiled by the
(by Agostino Mariette firm, reveal a fastidious approach ! _ _ _ _ __: . t
Carracci, Italian,
to presentation and quality. Such concerns
1557-1602),
appear in a more elaborate form in the albums
squared for
copying and that the family assembled for Eugene of Savoy,
stained with and which are now in the Albertina.22 Two
splashes of ink,
small pieces of evidence concerning the
500 x 326 mm.

From one of the

Mariettes reveal very clearly their concerns.
Saltram albums, The Berain album that they sent to John V is
Veneziani e fine, but the quality of impression is not as
Scuola di Carlo
brilliant as one might expect. The Mariettes
Maratta (fol.
29). The were so embarrassed by this that they felt
National Trust, constrained to explain in a letter that Berain
Saltram.
prints were then in great demand and that, to
their regret, these impressions were the best
that they could obtain.23 are such active dealers
everything here for its
The second piece of evidence is from a letter is all rubbish."25
sent by Pierre-Jean from Bologna to his father
in Paris in 1719. He was hoping to buy prints, The expertise of the M
but found that "All the prints in this country has long been known,
have been destroyed by the painters, or carried description of the coll
off by foreigners."24 By this he meant that for Eugene of Savoy f
many prints had been ruined for the collector Bartsch's descriptions
by being damaged when left lying around century later. The list
artists' studios. Many prints can still be seen reinforce the impressi
which have been drawn over or squared up by The descriptions are n
artists in the course of making new composi- the lettering on the pr
tions (fig. io). The next month Mariette was is what we find with J
in Rome and reported that "The English, who The Spencer descriptio

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ferme by Callot is particularly rare;were

thatsoldone
as albums,
set and at least one of these 47

of the Capricci, where Callot copies has survived to the present-one of his two
himself,
Parmigianino
was made after his return to France, and is volumes, which is now in the
not nearly as good as the first version made in
Metropolitan Museum. This contains etchings
Italy; that an etching clearly lettered
by "G.Renus
Parmigianino, reverse counterproofs and
invenit et fecit" is by Cantarini (quite correct-
copies of them, and prints by his followers
ly); and that another etching in the such
style of
as Schiavone. Together they form a real
Reni is by Sirani; and so on. Expertise of this
reference collection.26
order would be hard to find today, with the
benefit of nearly 300 years of publication
Nothing in the arrangement of the main part
and 150 years of photography. The Mariettes
of Mariette's collection would have surprised
achieved it entirely from their own anotes and Italy. But there were other
visitor from
memory; there was almost nothing available
models of arrangement in use in Paris at the
in print that could have helped them.
time. Roger de Piles, writing in 1699, talks
of three types of collector.27 The first is the
Besides the great collections they formed
lover of for
history, who collects portraits, maps,
Eugene of Savoy and John V, the Mariettes
and all that bears on history, such as entries
had an even finer collection in theirinto
personal
cities, carousels, funerals, catafalques,
possession that was not for sale. This tradition
fashion and costume prints, and everything
among French dealers persists to the present
relating to particular events. He mentions as
day, as all print curators know to their annoy-
the outstanding example of such a collector
ance. The Mariette family collection only
Roger de Gaignieres, who died in 1715 having
came on the market after Pierre-Jean's death
sold his collection a few years before to Louis
in 1775. The auction of his prints has
XIValways
in return for an annuity. And we know
been overshadowed by the sale of his collec-
from Florent Le Comte, also writing in 1699,
tion of drawings, but it must rankthat
among the collector was a major phe-
the portrait
greatest print sales of all time. For nomenon.
us, it isHe mentions a Monsieur Tesson
valuable in showing how Mariette arranged of Lille who had died three years before,
his collection, and what it contained. Not sur- leaving his son with thirty thousand por-
prisingly, the main part was by maltre and was traits, fourteen thousand duplicates, and an
arranged in oeuvres. Only particularly rare or endowment reserved purely to augment the
valuable volumes were broken up and the collection.28
contents sold separately. One print sold from
Mariette's volumes was Gerard Edelinck's De Piles's second type of collector is the one
Penitent Magdalene after Le Brun, which in that has concerned us so far. He has a passion
its first state before all letters made 332 livres for the fine arts, and he collects in volumes
as lot 898. This was one of the highest prices arranged within each school by painters and
for a single print in the entire sale. To put it their pupils. De Piles's third type of collector
into perspective, Mariette's collection of over is someone who collects prints according to
eight hundred chiaroscuro woodcuts in three the engraver without any regard to painter.
volumes-two Italian, one northern-which He only mentions this third type briefly in
the catalogue described as the largest and passing, perhaps giving the impression that
best chosen that had ever been made, only this type was not very significant. This would
fetched 298 livres. Most of Mariette's prints be a mistake. La Bruyere includes in his

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994
48 Characters of i688 a fellow whose life was
ruined by the absence of a single, minor print
which would complete his Callot collection;29
La Bruyere was not making this up. In 1744
Gersaint, in the catalogue of the Quentin de
L'Orangere sale, made the first attempt at
a catalogue of all Callot's works. He knew
exactly whom to approach: besides the Cabi-
net du Roi, he visited M. Potier, "avocat au
Parlement;" M. de Clairembault, a genealogist;
M. de Cleves; and M. Mariette, as well as one
unnamed Dutch collector.
M. Potier also collected the work of Sebastien
Le Clerc, his near-contemporary, and there is
a little story here that bears retelling. M. Potier
had built up a very fine collection of Le Clerc,
but when he showed it off to his rival collec-
tors, he discovered to his distress that they
always seemed to have some rarity that he
lacked. So in 1693 he commissioned a small
plate directly from Le Clerc, which he bought
as a plate together with all the twelve impres-
sions that Le Clerc was reserving for sale to
his curieux (collectors). So M. Potier had his
revenge.
One point revealed by this story is that print-
makers were beginning to reserve proofs.
Usually they kept the plates too. This was an
important development, as it encouraged the
formation of oeuvres of their work by collec-
tors. The engravers whose names have become
famous are in general those whose works have
been kept together, and this by and large only
happened in the case of those engravers who
kept their plates and sold impressions directly
to collectors. Those who sold their plates,
which were then scattered between a number
of different publishers, were very difficult to
collect, and so have tended to be forgotten.
The three methods of classification described
by de Piles were often combined in a single
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
collection. In the case of Mariette, although he
primarily collected by master, he also main-
tained oeuvres of some outstanding engravers
such as Cornelis Visscher, Antoine Masson,
and Gerard Edelinck. He also kept albums
arranged by subject. The Dutch equivalent of
de Piles's lover of history kept his collection
in what was called an Atlas. This contained
topographical, historical, portrait, costume,
and other prints that together gave a complete
picture of a country, its inhabitants, and its
history. Numerous such collections were
made in the Low Countries, often in associa-
tion with the wide-ranging cabinets of rarities
and curiosities from around the world that
were such a pronounced feature of collecting
there.3' Lot 1023 in the Mariette sale was just
such an Atlas Topographique in twelve vol-
umes containing no less than six thousand
prints.
Mariette also collected portrait prints, and
the 1775 sale contained over seventy lots of
them in large bundles. These may not have
been at the center of Mariette's collection,
but he certainly studied them seriously.
Martin Royalton-Kisch has recently discov-
ered, in the library of the Department of
Prints and Drawings in the British Museum,
Mariette's autograph manuscript catalogue
of a collection of portraits, possibly Eugene
of Savoy's, which contains no less than 981
closely written pages.
One marked feature of French comments on
prints is the stress on rarities. For Dezallier
d'Argenville they were to be avoided: they cost
too much and were usually rather miserable
and ugly things.32 Mariette had a more positive
view, and laid stress on variant states and
working proofs in the collection that he sup-
plied to Eugene of Savoy. Since such a concern
is notably absent from Italy, and indeed from
earlier French collections such as the enor-
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
mous accumulation of the abbe Marolles in
the mid-seventeenth century,33 we might ask
where it came from.
Although I cannot prove this, I think that
the answer is the Netherlands. Collections
of prints there were not primarily documents
of art history. They were associated with cabi-
nets of rarities, and the collector's mentality
of prizing uniqueness arose early. A famous
case concerns Lucas van Leyden's so-called
Eulenspiegel. It is a famous rarity: only four or
five impressions are known today, and in 1784
Bartsch searched for it high and low in Paris
and the Netherlands without finding a single
example on the market.34 When one did ap-
pear at auction in Amsterdam in 1642, it was
bought by Rembrandt, for the huge price of
179 guilders. This caused such amusement
among enough people to encourage the pub-
lisher Hondius to issue a copy of the print
two years later with a witty, punning text
that refers directly to the sale: it contrasts the
penury of the family of beggars with the enor-
mous price fetched by the print of them at the
auction.35
We have now touched briefly on collections
in Rome and Paris. What about the third city
of my title, London? Curiously this is the most
difficult to find information about in this
period. We know the names of many collec-
tors, but we know little about their collections.
Not much has been published, whether by
early or modern authors; there are few surviv-
ing auction catalogues from such an early
period; and the collections that do survive are
rather peculiar and unhelpful. The best known
is that of Samuel Pepys at Magdalene College,
Cambridge.36 The collection is arranged en-
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
tirely by subject, and focuses on Pepys's own 49
interests. One album is devoted to London
and Westminster. There are also albums of
title pages of books, views of France, and three
volumes labeled "Prints General." This con-
tains everything else, including scenes from
the Old and New Testament, arranged the-
matically. Here there are spectacular impres-
sions of Rembrandt's Ecce Homo, in the first
state on japan paper, and his Three Crosses, in
the first state on vellum. On the other hand,
both of them are described in the table of
contents as drawings, and the prints listed as
by Durer and Lucas van Leyden are mostly
miserable copies.
Pepys's collection was bound together in 1700.
Two other collections that survive in Oxford
colleges are slightly later, and show different
concerns. George Clarke at Worcester College
was interested in architecture and the antiqui-
ties of Rome, and accumulated mainly mod-
ern prints on these themes. But he sometimes
strayed so far as to buy excellent Salvator
Rosas and newly published Hogarths.37 Dean
Aldrich at Christ Church was responsible for
producing the Oxford Almanac every year,
and the only common denominator of the
complete hodgepodge of prints that he bought
seems to be their potential as compositions
that he might crib for next year's calendar.38
In these circumstances, it might seem better
to leave England out altogether, as backward
and barbarous. But certain clues give one
pause. Writing to Gabburri in the 1720S,
Zanetti said that it was the very high regard
in which chiaroscuro woodcuts were held
in London that gave him the idea of trying
to revive the medium.39 Now, the taste for
chiaroscuro woodcuts is perhaps the most
sophisticated of any in the field of prints,
and is closely connected to the taste for the
old master drawings after which so many of
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994

50 them were made. We know that such expertise
in drawings existed in England; the great
connoisseurs were Arthur Pond and Jonathan
Richardson, father and son, who not only
collected on their own account, but helped
and advised such enthusiasts as Lord Somers
and the 2nd Duke of Devonshire.
It was the 2nd Duke who assembled at Chats-
worth the greatest drawing collection of the
time in England. He also assembled an aston-
ishing print collection, to which surprisingly
little attention has ever been given.40 Although
this seems to have remained intact until the
sale of 1985,4' it is difficult to make any definite ing the collection is an account given of it by
Another English collection to which very
little attention has been paid is that of the
Earls of Pembroke at Wilton. This was
mounted in the early eighteenth century
in sixteen volumes, which were sold in 1917,
and the collection has been more or less for-
gotten ever since.42 But a number of the al-
bums were bought at the sale by American
institutions, and hence survive. The eighth
album, with etchings by Parmigianino and
other Italians, is now in the Metropolitan
Museum.43 The tenth album, which contains
wonderful chiaroscuro woodcuts, is in the
Figure I I
Library of Congress.44 The key to reconstruct-
Master E.S.,
German, active

assertions about it. An enthusiastic curator the printer Samuel Palmer, who published c. 1450-1467.
Head of Christ
rearranged most of the collection in the early it as an appendix to his General History of
(Lehrs 56). Print
nineteenth century according to the newly Printing in 1732. He makes it clear that the
size: 149 x 120
published catalogue of Bartsch, and so the collection was arranged by Thomas, the 8th mm. Repro-

original sequence is lost. It is not even certain Earl of Pembroke, between 1683 and 1733, duced from the
1917 Wilton
that all the prints were in fact acquired by the although many of the individual prints had
sale catalogue.
2nd Duke, or that everything he did acquire been collected by his father, Philip, the 5th British Museum,
survived the nineteenth-century rearrange- Earl, who died in 1669.45 London.

ment. But I think it is reasonable to say that

his collection contained very high quality
impressions, with many rarities. It had spec-
tacular Durers and Little Masters, wonderful
Marcantonios, great chiaroscuro woodcuts,
a number of monotypes by Castiglione, and
the best collection of early impressions of
Mantegna's engravings in the world. Above
all, the Chatsworth collection was based on
printmaker, not master. The mass of repro-
ductive prints seen in other collections of
the period is notable by its absence; there
F99 of ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . . . . . . . . . . . .
are next to no copies in the place of originals,
* z i _ 5 _ 9 x < X +e^ '~~~~~~~~~~~~~J

and the few worn or damaged prints are all

great rarities. This gives the Chatsworth
collection a surprisingly twentieth-century
appearance-the prints the 2nd Duke valued
are the ones commonly valued today-and
this distinguishes it from its French and
Italian counterparts.

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Of the sixteen volumes of the collection, the the black and white disposed contrary to
hammer; 51

first two were devoted to drawings. The third mezzotinto. Per Janum Lutma

volume, which was the first volume of prints, I 1: In this John Lutma has added graving to the

is arranged in an entirely original way. Palmer hammering

describes it as an introduction to prints which 12: Jacobus Lutma mixed etching with engraving

"comprehends the first inventors of all the 13: Venus and Mavors (Mars) by Johannes Collaert.

different manners, many of them now disused This is the only print that ever was engraved on

or the art lost." There were thirty-six prints steel.

in this section, which the 8th Earl arranged 14: Domenico Campagnola, the first that printed

in such an order to provide "A History of the with red on a black ground.
Rise and Progress of Prints." He also wrote
underneath each of them a caption to ex- We need not worry about the accuracy of the

plain its significance. The only record of the facts to realize that here is a concern with the

appearance of these captions is in a couple technical history of the print that we have not

of photographs in the 1917 auction catalogue, previously met.

one of which is of the Head of Christ, dated

1467, by the Master ES (fig. ii). In the repro-
duction the Earl's handwriting is only dimly
legible, but fortunately Samuel Palmer tran-
scribed all thirty-six captions and printed
them in his book. So the Earl's comment on
this print (which he thought was by Israhel
van Meckenem) reads:
This Israel van Meckenem is by some authors called
Van Mecklin, & Mentz, & Moguntin. Lomazero says
he was the first that engraved; he was master to
Bon Martino [i.e., Schongauer], who was master to
Albert Durer, whose first print was a copy after
this of Israel's anno 1497, and as Baldinucci says
Israel did not engrave till he had seen the Triumph
of Ant. Montegno, anno 1467, which is the oldest
date that any author has mention'd, and the ter-
If we now look at Palmer's descriptions of the
following thirteen albums the surprises con-
tinue. Album four contains prints of Italian
pictures, but divided by technique: etchings,
then woodcuts, and finally mezzotints. Album
seven has "The 17 chief Gravers, their princi-
pal prints all after Italian paintings of Rafael
Urbin, and all that they graved." Album eight
is the one in the Metropolitan Museum, and
shows the work of "23 etchers who were also
painters; and at the end are all that Aug.
Caracci graved, the other two Caracci's being
in this book." At the front is a manuscript list
of contents where all twenty-three artists are
arranged in strict chronological order by their
date of birth.46

mination being Spanish, shows that the art spread
very soon.
This is extremely garbled history, but it is an
attempt at history nonetheless.
On the next page of Palmer, we can read tran- history of printmaking ever written, and
scripts of the captions written by the Earl
under prints io to 14 in the same album:
I 0: The head of Lutma the father, done with the
The entirely original aspect of the Wilton col-
lection is the concern with the print as a series
of different techniques, each with a history of
its own. Where did the 8th Earl get this from?
I suggest that it might have been from John
Evelyn, whose Sculptura of 1662 was the first
whom we know to have been a correspondent
of the Earl.47 Evelyn's treatise was intended
to form part of a "History of arts liberal and
mechanick" in which he listed dozens of crafts

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994
52 and occupations under eight categories. En-
graving was merely one subheading of the
category of "curious" arts, to which sculpture
and painting also belonged.48 By considering
printmaking from the point of view of a trade
or a craft, Evelyn and those influenced by him
could approach the classification of the prints
themselves in an original way.
The quality and presentation of the prints at
Wilton does not compare with Mariette's.
Nor is the quality in general as good as at
Chatsworth. But it does share with the Chats-
worth collection something of the same inter-
est in the painter's print and in the print as
an object in itself. Peering dimly through the
fog of the past, we might even be able to trace
this approach back to the famous Earl of
Arundel, whose wide-ranging collections were
put together in the 1620s and the 1630s. One
of the Wilton albums contained the famous
Eulenspiegel, which is reproduced in the 1917
auction catalogue. Palmer's transcription
of the 8th Earl's text below reads: "36. The
famous bag-piper by Lucas van Leyden. This
is the original which was sold for 6o Duca-
toons. The copy, which stands next to it, is
pretty scarce. These two, and that on the gold
cane, were on one cartoon in the Arundel
collection."
The "gold cane" is another famous rarity,
a tiny Crucifixion engraved by Duirer in a
circle just under one-half inch in diameter.49
Palmer's transcription of the Earl's text
reads: "35. A crucifix engraved on a golden
head of the Emperor's cane. It was sold for
150 gilders, and is the only print taken from
gold; that of An. Caracci is only from a silver
salver. My Lord has it; there is but this one
print of it, which he took off as a proof before
it was gilt." The Earl was wrong to think his
impression unique, as half a dozen or more
are known today. But his facts are mostly
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
right. Durer was commissioned to make this
tiny engraving for the pommel of the emperor
Maximilian's sword, and a letter of 1520 con-
firms that it was on gold. The impressions
must have been taken before the plate was
let into the pommel of the sword. Arundel's
interest in it may only have been as a rarity,
but the 8th Earl of Pembroke was unquestion-
ably concerned with it for its technique. This
concern for the history of prints as a series of
technical experiments and discoveries seems
to have been a distinctive British contribution
to print collecting.
I must now conclude and gather up some
scattered threads. I have-I hope correctly-
identified a mainstream of print collecting by
masters that is common to northern Europe
and Italy in the first half of the eighteenth
century. Let no one think that this is the only
sort of print collecting; I am sure that there
were as many types of collector then as there
are today. We have only been concerned with
the mainstream and the major collectors, who
worked on the most up-to-date principles of
their day. These principles were to hold into
the second half of the century: they were codi-
fied in Baron von Heinecken's great work,
L'Ide'e ge'ne'rale d'une collection complette des
Estampes, which he published in 1771 after
many years experience building up the col-
lection of the Dukes of Saxony in Dresden.
Mariette and Zanetti were his personal ac-
quaintances. In this catalogue, all prints are
still classified under master. It was only with
Pierre-Fran ois Basan's Dictionnaire des
Graveurs in 1767 that the first book came out
arranged by engravers. But Basan still followed
tradition inasmuch as the engravers and en-
gravings that he dwelt on were those that
found a place in Heinecken.
The great revolutionary was Adam Bartsch,
whose Le peintre-graveur (commonly and
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

included either simply because they are etch-

revealingly mistranslated as "The painter- 53

etcher") began publication in Vienna in 1803.

ings rather than engravings, or because of the
Bartsch simply threw out all reproductive
venerability of the engraver.
prints, damning them with the fatal compari-
son with translations of poetry. Why, he as-
While noting the similarities between France
serted, look at a translation whenand
you can
Italy, we have also noted differences,
look at an original? In the field ofparticularly
prints, the in the lack of concern for quality
originals are to be found in the work of the It is not enough to say that
of impression.
"peintre-graveurs." So concentrate
theon thehave always been51 and still are
French
painter's print, which is likely toconcerned
be an etch-
for la belle epreuve, while Italian
ing, and ignore the work of the professional
dealers are still notorious for buying the junk
engraver, which is likely to be reproductive.
lots in London auctions. Underlying the dif-
It was not until the second half of the isnine-
ference a divergent understanding of what
teenth century, with the destruction of
a print is, the
and what is important about it.
reproductive engraver's livelihood by
This the
distinguishes Italian from northern
invention of photography, that Bartsch's ap- as early as the fifteenth
printmaking from
proach began to dominate print history,
century. For and
the Italian a print is, as it were,
it was not until the twentieth that it won you
transparent; so look through it to see the
completely that it is difficult for creator's
us today to The print is a storehouse of
design.
look at prints in any other perspective. Only
compositions, brilliant inventions, that can
in the twentieth century would the hugeasprice
be admired a whole or as parts. This is
for the Edelinck engraving in the Mariette
how Italian painters, majolica workers, and
sale appear incredible. indeed printmakers used them. A famous
case is Marcantonio's engraving known as
No one has yet tried to trace the origins of Les Grimpeurs: the three figures come from
Bartsch's approach, nor has anyone explained Michelangelo's cartoon of the Battle of
why it has been so successful. This is an im- Cascina, while the background is lifted almost
portant task still to be done, and I will not entirely from Lucas's print of Mohammed
attempt it here. I would merely comment that and the Monk Sergius of 1508.
Bartsch's catalogue is useless for anyone who
has a large old collection to organize. Even For the Italian the particular form in which
Bartsch himself made no reference to it in his any design occurs is relatively unimportant.
1820 treatise on the administration of the col- Whether he sees Raphael's Massacre of the
lection of prints of the Imperial Court Library Innocents in a print or a drawing, in an en-
in Vienna.50 Here the arrangement he recom- graving by Marcantonio or in the crudest
mended was entirely traditional-by master copy after him, whether the print is in fine
and with a few oeuvres of engravers added. I condition or whether it is a wreck-all this is
would also comment that Bartsch's catalogue much less significant. In the north, the print
is fundamentally incoherent. His approach is not transparent; it is an object in its own
works tolerably well for German and Nether- right and a piece of craftsmanship. If it is a
landish prints, but breaks down in the Italian copy or a wreck, it loses its value. This is an
schools, where we find that the majority of unconventional and perhaps controversial
the prints listed are indeed "reproductive" by thing to say, although I am convinced that it
Bartsch's own definition of the term. They are is one key to understanding the history of

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994
54 prints. Other print historians, notably Evelina
Borea and Michael Bury, have said as much
from different starting points.52 I think that a
consideration of early print collections lends
further support for their position.
In any event, I would like to assert the real
importance of the study of print collecting.
For too long print historians have concen-
trated on a restricted range of print produc-
tion, and have not inquired hard enough why
prints were made or how they were used. We
still know far too little about publishers and
buyers-and collectors formed a crucial group
of buyers. It was primarily the changing inter-
ests of collectors that changed the nature of
current print production. If we redirect our
research towards them, we will be able to
answer new questions and bring into focus
that vast field of print production-the repro-
ductive print-that is now so slighted.
To do this it is essential that as many col-
lections as possible are studied, and that
means they must be kept together. Every day
albums are being broken up both in the trade
and in museums. Each loss is a blow to print
history, for the information an album gives
as an assemblage is vastly greater than the
sum of its parts. A ruined print by itself tells
us very little; in an album made for John V it
means a lot. So I conclude by congratulating
the Fogg Art Museum on the acquisition
of the Spencer albums, on keeping them
together, and on publishing them in such a
handsome way. It has done a real service to
print history.
Postscript
This article gives the text of the lecture I gave presented. She also tells me that the Bologna
at Harvard on 8 April 1993 virtually unaltered,
except for the changes necessitated by the
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
transfer from spoken to written form and the
absence of slides. A lecture is different from
an article, and a laborious accumulation of
evidence will send any audience to sleep. So
I have preferred a more impetuous presenta-
tion. This is my excuse for putting forward
theories and generalizations on what I am the
first to admit is the slenderest of foundations
of evidence. My only ambition is to erect a
hypothesis about the nature of print collecting
in the early eighteenth century that can act to
focus later research. I shall not be in the least
surprised if the ideas put forward here are
severely modified.
One major problem in preparing this lecture
was quite simply that hardly anything has
yet been published on print collections as
collections. There are still no descriptions
or illustrations available about even such a
famous collection as Eugene of Savoy's in
the Albertina. Many albums of the Marolles
collection remain intact in the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris, but historians can still
only refer to Marolles's own books published
in the seventeenth century. So in my lecture I
was only able to draw on a handful of printed
sources (which are mentioned in the foot-
notes) and the visits I was able to make during
the preparation of the lecture to a few collec-
tions in Britain and abroad.
I was not able to travel to Italy, and I was
probably too hard in my remarks on the gen-
eral quality of Italian collections. After the
lecture Sue Welsh Reed kindly told me about
the collection in the Biblioteca Marucelliana
in Florence, which she studied when working
on her exhibition of Italian etching, held in
Boston in 1989. She remembers it as having
high quality impressions, well arranged and
collection (which I do not know) is better
than I had assumed. As more collections are
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

studied, we will begin to get a betterHis catalogue of the collection of Michiel

overall 55

impression. Hinloopen (1619-1708), which was published

by the Rijksmuseum in 1988, contains a mass
I may have underestimated Italian relative of relevant information.
poverty in the eighteenth century and the fact
that foreign dealers must have been cleaning
out the supply of good impressions for more Acknowledgments

than a century. Next to nothing is yet known

of the international trade in old master prints
in the seventeenth century, but it must have
been extensive. The production of etchings
by Castiglione and others in the early to mid-
seventeenth century implies a circle of Italian
collectors who were interested in the medium.
Later Italian collectors would doubtless have
collected better impressions if they had been
available. Nevertheless, the fact remains that
Italian collections did contain many poor
impressions and many copies, and gave no
priority to what we would call "original" over
"reproductive" prints. This indicates a differ-
ent attitude to what was important about a
print than is found in the north.
Another area of uncertainty is in my account
of British collections. Until more research has
been carried out, it remains unclear whether
the Pembroke collection was one of a recog-
nized type or whether it was unique. It must
be admitted that nothing like it is to be found
in the unpublished inventory of John Evelyn's
own collection.
I owe thanks to many who helped me in this
lecture. Many curators were very kind in
showing me their collections; some are indi-
vidually acknowledged in the footnotes, but
I would like to thank all here. Marie-Therese
Mandroux-Franca and Colta Ives enabled
me to show slides of the John V and Wilton
albums. Sheila O'Connell and Frederick
Ilchman sat through a dummy run of the
lecture and suggested many improvements,
as did Richard Godfrey, who read a printed
version. Peter Parshall, my fellow-lecturer,
provided much moral support and encourage-
ment. At Harvard, I would like to thank James
Cuno, Becky Hunt, and above all Marjorie
Cohn for making my visit so pleasant. Finally
I thank Evelyn Rosenthal and Becky Hunt for
so carefully seeing this lecture into print.
Antony Griffiths is keeper of the Department of
Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.

Finally, my account contains next to nothing

about the Netherlands, and this is a major
lacuna. In the mid-eighteenth century it was
Holland and the Low Countries that were the
main source of supply of prints for the French
market; every summer Paris dealers would
head north to stock up for the forthcoming
season. So Netherlandish collections were
obviously of great significance. Fortunately,
research in this area is proceeding apace,
conducted primarily by Jan van der Waals.

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994
56 Notes
Print reference sources:
B. = Adam Bartsch, Le peintre-graveur, 21 vols.
(Vienna, 1803-21)
Kainen = Jacob Kainen, John Baptist Jackson: i8th
Century Master of the Color Woodcut (Washington,
1962)
Lehrs = Max Lehrs, Geschichte und Kritischer Katalog
des deutschen, niederlandischen undfranzosischen
Kupferstichs im XV. Jarhundert, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1g9o)
i. William W. Robinson, "This Passion for Prints"
in Clifford S. Ackley, Printmaking in the Age of
Rembrandt, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts Boston
(Boston, 1981), pp. xxvii-xlviii; and Marjorie B. Cohn,
A Noble Collection: The Spencer Albums of Old Master
Prints, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
Art Museums (Cambridge, 1992).
2. A good introduction to this period of Portuguese
culture has recently been published in The Age of the
Baroque in Portugal, ed. Jay A. Levenson, exh. cat.,
National Gallery of Art (Washington, 1993).
3. Marie-Therese Mandroux-Frania, "La collection
d'estampes du Roi Jean V de Portugal: une relecture
des Notes Manuscrites de Pierre-Jean Mariette," Revue
de l'art73 (1986): 49-54.
4. Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville, "Lettre sur le
choix et l'arrangement d'un Cabinet curieux," Mercure
de France, June 1727, pp. 1294-1330. The remark quoted
comes on p. 1302.
5. Published by Marie-Therese Mandroux-Franca, "Les
collections d'estampes du Roi Jean V de Portugal: un
programme des Lumieres Joanines en voie de reconsti-
tution," in Portugal no seculo XVIII de D. Joao V a
Revolufao Francesa, proceedings of the Congresso
Internacional held in Lisbon in November 1989
(Lisbon, 1991), pp. 283-93.
6. The Latin reads: "M. Brit. Historiae Naturalis
Miscellanea Collectio ut a maximis ad minima
viventia innumerabilem creationem et daedalam
omnipotentiam I.V.L.R. [Johannes V Lusitaniae Rex]
scientiarum sectator contempletur."
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
7. Sotheby's, 29 June 1992, lot 7. It has the bookplate of
Manuel, the last king of Portugal, who abdicated in
1910. He formed a great library of Portuguese books
(of which he published the section from 1489-1600 in
London in three volumes in 1929-35), and the album
was almost certainly bought by him on the market
rather than inherited. This leaves open the question
where it came from, and therefore what else may still
survive of John V's collection of prints.
8. Antony Griffiths, "The Print Collection of Cassiano
dal Pozzo," Print Quarterly 6 (1989): 2-10.
9. The print is A. de Vesme, Le peintre-graveur italien
(Milan, 1906), p. 2, cat. no. 2. It reproduces a painting
of unknown authorship now in the Pallavicini col-
lection in Rome, which is reproduced by A. Moir, The
Italian Followers of Caravaggio (Cambridge, Mass.,
1967), p. 239, n. 5o, and pl. 310.
10. Alastair Laing told me about the collection, and
thanks are owed to him and to Hugh Meller and Brian
Ludford of the National Trust for giving access to it.
Craig Hartley has published a brief account of the
volumes in Print Quarterly 9 (1992): 357-60.
ii. On Roman collectors, see most recently Drawing:
The Great Collectors, ed. G.C. Sciolla (Turin, 1992), pp.
41-67,102-12, and the references there given.
12. On the Rossi firm and their catalogues see Francesca
Consagra, "The Marketing of Pietro Testa's Poetic
Inventions," in Elizabeth Cropper, Pietro Testa 1612-
1650: Prints and Drawings, exh. cat., Philadelphia
Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. lxxxvii-civ.
Pierre-Jean Mariette was very struck by their catalogues
when he visited Italy in 1719, and wrote to his father
that he too should print a catalogue of his stock (Cohn,
The Spencer Albums [n. 1 above], p. 28 and n. 41). It
would make the lives of modern print historians much
easier if his father had taken this advice.
13. A.M. Clark, "The Portraits of Artists Drawn for
Nicola Pio," Master Drawings 5 (1967): 3-23. Another
collection of drawn portraits of artists was formed by
Niccolo Gabburri (1676-1742) in conjunction with a
large collection of drawings and prints, of which the
inventory survives unpublished in Florence. See
Nicholas Turner, "The Gabburri/Rogers Series of
Drawn Self-Portraits and Portraits of Artists," Journal
of the History of Collections 5 (1993): 179-216.
 PRINT COLLECTING IN ROME, PARIS, AND LONDON IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

21. Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, Raccolta di lettere sulla

14. Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodino, "La collezione 57
pittura, scultura ed architettura (Rome, 1754-68), in six
di stampe di Nicola Pio," Bollettino d'Arte 52 (1988):
67-80. I owe this reference to the help of Giorgio
volumes.

Marini.

22. No useful description of Eugene of Savoy's

15. Antichi disegni e stampe dell'Accademia Carrara di
Bergamo (Bergamo, 1963), part 2, pI. 1.
16. Although much has been published on Krahe's
famous collection of drawings, hardly anything has
been said about his prints. The original albums were
broken up at an early point, but a complete inventory
survives, which I was able to consult thanks to the
kindness of Dr. Heckmann. A few volumes were kept
by subject matter (e.g., prints after the Antique), but
the great majority were by school and master. When
the collection was handed over from the Kunst-
akademie to the Kunstmuseum in 1934 a new inven-
tory was prepared. This was carefully done, and the
register is full of remarks such as "schlecht" (bad),
"verschmutzt" (stained), and "fleckig" (foxed); many
prints too are listed as copies. With the help of Dr.
Heckmann, I was able to find some of the prints
themselves, usually still on their eighteenth-century
backing sheets, and these bore out the remarks in the
1934 inventory.
collection has yet been published, though some
remarks on it are made by Marjorie Cohn in The
Spencer Albums (n. i above).
23. I owe this observation and information to Peter
Fuhring. He was surprised by the low quality of the
Berain album. This prompted Mandroux-FranSa to
find in the Lisbon archives the letter I refer to, which
has not yet been published by her.
24. Cohn, The Spencer Albums (n. 1 above), p. 28.
25. Ibid., p. 28 and n. 39. I have freely translated the
French: ". . . les Anglois qui sont si tracaffiers chez
nous, achettent icy tous au poids de l'or & toutes
mauvaises choses."
26. The two Parmigianino volumes fetched 8oo livres in
the 1775 auction.
27. Roger de Piles, Abrege de la vie des Peintres (Paris,
1699), pp. 74-92.

17. This collection is being published by the Soprin-

tendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici di Bologna in a 28. Florent Le Comte, Cabinet des Singularitez
series of volumes. It certainly contains plenty of copies, d'Architecture, Peinture, Sculpture et Graveure, vol. 3
but impressions, so far as one can judge from the (Paris, 1699), p. 212.
reproductions, are good.

29. In the section "On Fashion" (in the Penguin

i8. Maria Catelli Isola et al., Igrandi disegni italiani dal
Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe di Roma (Milan,
1980), pp. 17-36, includes an account of this collection,
though more with reference to the drawings than to the
prints.
19. Antony Griffiths, "The Prints and Drawings in the
Library of Consul Joseph Smith," Print Quarterly 8
(1991): 127-39, and Martin Royalton-Kisch,
"Rembrandt, Zomer, Zanetti and Smith," Print
Quarterly io (1993): 111-22.
20. The most obvious examples are the albums that
Zanetti compiled of his own chiaroscuro woodcuts. I
do not know any surviving album of Zanetti's print
collection, but an album of drawings by Palma Giovane
that he put together is in the British Museum.
translation by Jean Stewart, pp. 251-52).
30. R.-A. Weigert, "Trois 'collaborateurs' imprevus:
Sebastien Le Clerc, Eisen, Charles-Nicolas Cochin,"
L'amateur des estampes 11 (1932): 145-53. The etching is
no. i8 in Maxime Preaud's catalogue in vol. 8 of the
Inventaire dufondsfran,ais of the Bibliotheque
Nationale (Paris, 1980).
31. The best study of Dutch atlas collections is by Jan
van der Waals, Een Wereldreiziger op papier: Das Atlas
van Laurens van der Hem 1621-78 (Amsterdam, 1992).
32. Dezallier d'Argenville, "Lettre sur le choix," (n. 4
above), p. 1301.
33. Michel de Marolles published two Catalogues de
livres d'estampes et defigures en taille douce, the first in

This content downloaded from

109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS BULLETIN - SPRING 1994
58 i666, the second in 1672 (Paris).
34. Alfred Stix, "Pariser Briefe des Adam Bartsch aus
dem Jahre 1784," in Festschriftfur Max J. Friedlander
zum 6o Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1927), pp. 312-51.
35. Walter L. Strauss and Marjon van der Meulen, The
Rembrandt Documents (New York, 1979), p. 232.
36. A.W. Aspital, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at
Magdalene College Cambridge III: Prints and Drawings,
Part I, General (Woodbridge, 1980), and Jan van der
Waals, "The Print Collection of Samuel Pepys," Print
Quarterly i (1984): 236-57.
37. Timothy Clayton, "The Print Collection of George
Clarke at Worcester College, Oxford," Print Quarterly 9
(1992): 123-41.
38. There is a general account, "The Aldrich Engrav-
ings" as chapter 3 of W.G. Hiscock, A Christ Church
Miscellany (Oxford, 1946), pp. 31-37. The use he made
of it was revealed by H.M. Petter, The Oxford Almanacs
(Oxford, 1974). It was also used by John Baptist Medina among the Evelyn manuscripts at Christ Church,
for his illustrations to Paradise Lost: see Suzanne
Boorsch, "The 1688 Paradise Lost and Dr. Aldrich,"
Metropolitan Museum Journal 6 (1972): 133-50.
39. Bottari, Raccolta di lettere (n. 21 above), letters 55
and 75; cf. Print Quarterly 8 (1991): 137-38.
40. The following account derives from my own notes
made on a visit in 1980.
41. Christie's, London, 5 December 1985, Old Master
Printsfrom Chatsworth.
42. Sotheby's, London, 5-6 July 1917. Lots 1-298 con-
tained individual impressions cut out of the albums;
lots 299-316 the albums themselves, with whatever
prints remained in them.
43. This volume was actually acquired in 1927 (Dick
Fund 27.78.1). But the Metropolitan Museum bought at
the sale itself volumes 6, 7, 9, and 14. These four albums
have now been broken up, but the contents are com-
pletely listed on inventory cards.
44. Alan M. Fern and Karen F. Jones, "The Pembroke
Album of Chiaroscuro Woodcuts," Quarterly Journal of
the Library of Congress (1969). I owe this reference and
This content downloaded from
109.252.20.39 on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 17:39:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
the chance to examine the album (which is now empty,
the prints having been extracted for mounting) to the
kindness of Bernard Reilly.
45. The 8th Earl was one of the most notable virtuosi of
his day, although his political career has disguised his
intellectual accomplishments. For a year in 1689-go he
was president of the Royal Society, and his collection
of ancient sculpture and medals was famous in its day.
See Joseph M. Levine, Dr. Woodward's Shield: History,
Science, and Satire in Augustan England (Berkeley,
1977), especially pp. 284-87.
46. Richardson rearranged the Resta collection of
drawings for Lord Somers by date of artist, but in
reverse, starting with the most recent: see Carol
Gibson-Wood, "Jonathan Richardson, Somers's
Collection of Drawings, and Early Art-Historical
Writing in England," Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 52 (1989): 167-87.
47. This becomes clear from an unpublished letter
dated 3 June 1699 from Charles Hatton to John Evelyn
Oxford.
48. Evelyn's Sculptura, with the Unpublished Second
Part, ed. C.F. Bell (Oxford, 1906), p. ii-iii of the
introduction to the second part.
49. Campbell Dodgson, Albrecht Darer (London, 1926),
pp. 115-17. The object the Earl calls a "cane" was, in
fact, a sword.
50. Concerning the Administration of the Collection of
Prints of the Imperial Court Library in Vienna by Adam
von Bartsch, translated by Walter L. Strauss from the
manuscript of the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (New
York, 1982).
51. The locus classicus for such a concern is Edme-
Francois Gersaint's preface to his Catalogue d'estampes
de choix (Paris, 1745), reprinted by Jean Adhemar in
Nouvelles de l'estampe 11 (1973): 9-11.
52. Evelina Borea, "Stampa figurativa e pubblico dalle
origini all'affermazione nel Cinquecento," in Storia
dell'arte italiana, ed. G. Bollati and P. Fossati, pt. 1, vol.
2 (Turin, 1979), pp. 319-413; and Michael Bury, "On
Some Engravings by Giorgio Ghisi Commonly Called
'Reproductive,"' Print Quarterly io (1993): 4-19.