Adam's The Irish Library Wednesday 17th April 2019

24 26 A PAIR OF 19TH CENTURY GILT BRONZE COPIES OF ‘THE WARWICK VASE’, raised on green marble platform bases, 21cms wide, 15cms high € 600 - 1,000 ‘The Warwick Vase’, an ancient Roman marble vessel with Bacchic or- nament was discovered at Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli about 1771 by Gavin Hamilton, a Scottish painter-antiquarian, and more importantly and an art dealer in Rome. Hamilton had been given permission to carry out excavations and so proceeded to drain the marshy area around the villa. He sold the fragments to William Hamilton, British envoy at the court of Naples. While the design and ornamentation date to the Hellenistic period of 2nd Century Rome, the extent to which the fragments were restored DQG IXUWKHU FRPSOHWHG DIWHU LWV GLVFRYHU\ LV VLJQLȴFDQW $V 6LU :LOOLDP Hamilton remarked ‘I was obliged to cut a block of marble at Carrara WR UHSDLU LW ZKLFK KDV EHHQ KROORZHG RXW DQG IUDJPHQWV ȴ[HG RQ LW E\ ZKLFK PHDQV WKH YDVH LV DV ȴUP DQG HQWLUH DV WKH GD\ LW ZDV PDGHȋ (Nancy H. Ramage “Sir William Hamilton as a Collector, Exporter and Dealer: The Acquisition and Dispersal of his collections” American Journal of Archaeology 94.3 (July 1990 pp 469 - 480). It was in fact James Byre who initially undertook the restoration of the vase but it has been suggested that it was completed by the Italian ar- chitect Giovanni Battistsa Piranesi, who added, against the opinion of both Byre and Hamilton, decoration to the body behind the handles. Piranesi made two etchings of the completed vase, dedicated to Ham- ilton, which were included in his 1778 publication “Vasi, candelabra, cippi sarcofagi, tripodi, lvcerne ed ornamenti antichi”. Hamilton had hoped to sell the vase to the British Museum and when to his disappointment they declined, he gifted it to his nephew George Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick, from whence it got its namesake. The Earl’s new acquisition caused a sensation amongst the 18th cen- tury British public, many came to visit it at Warwick Castle making it VR ZHOO NQRZQ WKDW LW ȴOWHUHG GRZQ LQWR WKH GHVLJQV IRU ZLQH FRROHUV salt cellars etc. Initially Hamilton, hugely protective of his prized possession, refused to allow any full size copies to be made of it. On special request from Lord Lonsdale, who intended to have a full-size silver replica cast, a set of moulds were commissioned. This plan was eventually aban- doned and only later William Theed’s original moulds were sent to Paris in the 19th century. Two full scale bronze replicas were cast, one is housed in Windsor Castle and the other in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. ‘The Warwick Vase’ became a source of inspiration for designs during the 18th and 19th centuries as the revival of neo-classicism took hold of the cultural and artistic milieu. The earliest reductions of the vase were in the form of silver ice pails made by English sil- versmith Paul Storr for the Prince Regent in 1812. David Udy, writing in The Burlington Magazine 120, December 1978, concluded that Storr had worked from Piranesi’s etchings. Many smaller scale ex- amples have proliferated since, mostly appearing in silver, bronze and porcelain versions by Rockingham and Worcester. 7KH GLVWLQFWLYH ȵXWHG DQG LQWHUWZLQHG KDQGOHV VXJJHVW D PRUH UR - bust naturalistic aesthetic, while the repeating masks modeled in KLJK UHOLHI WR HDFK VLGH RI WKH YDVH ERG\ UHȵHFW D PRUH RUJDQL]HG and balanced tone. The classical motifs are reinforced in the egg and dart molding around the top and base and the Nemean lion SHOW EHORZ WKH WZR FHQWUH PDVNV ΖW KDV ȴUPO\ WDNHQ XS D SODFH LQ the visual repertory of classical design. On one hand the immense popularity of the vase indicates a re- spect and the strength of cultural desire for a sense of historical continuity - a desire which had been sparked by the publication RI :LQNOHPDQȇV +LVWRU\ RI $QFLHQW $UW ȴUVW SXEOLVKHG LQ %ULWDLQ LQ 1764. However, on the other hand the fragmentary nature of the vase upon its discovery did not align with the 18th century appreci- ation of classical art, and so it was reconstructed where it was found to be lacking. ‘The Warwick Vase’ in some senses is an expression of how often the desire for continuity with our past ancestors is of- ten satiated by a pastiche of history rather than a faithful retrieval. The needs of the cultural present are often more important than that of the past. Needless to say, practices around archaeological excavation and restoration of artefacts and art objects has shifted VLJQLȴFDQWO\ VLQFH WKH WK DQG WK FHQWXULHV Ȇ7KH :DUZLFN 9DVHȇ presents a unique insight, in its many forms and iterations, into the revival of neo-classicism in the 18th and 19th centuries.