IV. Objects in Context
IV.2 Collection studies in the Ancient World
In what remains of this chapter, I review the model that is now widely used to synthesize
the diversity of most archaeological (but also literary) statuary assemblages. Whereas
earlier scholarship was content to mark sizable assemblages of diverse, domestic statues as inherently “eclectic”, recent scholarship has largely abandoned this term in favor of
110 Indeed, most studies of the dichotomies across paganism and Christianity are dependent on literary
and/or historical evidence. For example, the Theodosian Code (compiled 429-38) suggests that laws had to be enacted in late antiquity to preserve public antique statuary from destruction; for a succinct discussion see Stirling 2005, 158-63. See also d’Annoville 2015. Archaeological evidence is often less amenable to verification of these black and white narratives, cf. essays in Lavan and Mulryan 2009; Bowes 2008.
synthesis of ancient collections.111 This brief discussion of the scholarly context of
domestic statuary discussion will therefore conclude with a review of collection studies in
the ancient world, for indeed, this dissertation does aim to contribute to these
conservations.
Before reviewing some of the collection literature which exists in ancient studies,
I pause to reflect here on what I perceive as a growing problem within archaeological
discourse in particular, that is, the over-simplification of statuary assemblages as “collections” or “collected objects”.112 “Collection” is a fraught term that most of us
rarely define, especially in archaeology.113 Various analyses have cast the sculptural
111 For “eclecticism” in Roman art, one need look no further than analyses of Pompeian houses, cf. Zanker
1998b for the scholarly disdain which frequently surrounds eclecticism. In more recent scholarship, eclecticism has become almost matter-of-fact (Bergmann 2002; Clarke 2002; Beagan 2009).
112 The villas in this dissertation have all, at one time or another, been referenced as ancient collections, by
myself and others. Personal unease with the use of the word “collection” has developed over the course of my research, prompted largely by stimulating discussions with Vassilki Gaggadis-Robin of the Centre Camille Jullian. I note that though some scholars may disagree with me, others evidently share similar qualms. I note here a conference that is roughly contemporaneous with the completion of this dissertation: Beyond "Art Collections": Owning and Accumulating Objects from Greek and Roman Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Pisa November 17-19, 2016).
113 With respect to previous scholarship, Stirling (2005) refers primarily to “collectors” rather than statuary
“collections” in her book, though her rhetoric implies the latter. The same slippage appears in passim in 2014’s Museum Archetypes and collecting in the ancient world (ed. Wellington Gahtan and Pegazzano). Literary sources shed light on collecting habits and motivations, and these sources are employed to tacitly suggest that archaeological assemblages are collections. The vocabulary used for the statuary assemblages is not collection, but object groupings, art holdings or object accumulations, vocabulary which highlights a slippage in ancient collecting studies: scholars are uneasy with the use of “collection” as a synonym for assemblage. Museum archetypes is the most recent collection of essays on collecting, an overview of the scholarship on public, private, and virtual collections in Greek and Roman antiquity. The monograph is an important contribution to ongoing research but it exposes our utter reliance on literary sources for
collecting as a cultural phenomenon. I should note here that theoretical study of “collection” is in its infancy. Collection is understood by some as a form of obsession (van der Grijp 2007) and by others as a physical manifestation of more complex human desires vis-à-vis possession (Baudrillard in Cardinal and Elsner 1994). Collection also figures in commodification studies developing from Marxist theory,
Appadurai 1988; Kopytoff 1986; see also object theory, Gosden 2005. For the history of art collecting and ancient art in particular Alsop 1982; Haskell and Penny 1982.
assemblages of many villas surveyed in this dissertation as collections - Chiragan, El
Ruedo, Valdetorres de Jarama and Quinta das Longas; there is, however, no consensus on what “collection” entails, let alone similarities across these assemblages that might
generate a clear definition of collection.
Chiragan’s statuary assemblage was formally marked as a “collection” in 1901.114
Though this proposition was set forth a century ago, modern scholarship does not find it
outdated. To my mind, the size and depth of the assemblage (over 120 extant statues)
suggest that it is indeed a collection of sorts, with obvious evidence of curation, but it
should not stand as the model for collection in archaeology. If it were to become that model, no other statuary assemblage could rightly be called a “collection”.115 At El
Ruedo it has been suggested that some 80% of the sculptures stood as a collection,
organized by a program of otium.However, statues which do not fit into this program – namely portraits – are left out of the narrative, and it is unclear what relationship they had
114 Joulin, 1901; see also Bergmann 1999, 26-43; 2007. “Collection” as the logical conclusion to synthesis
of this assemblage is frequent, see various previous analyses discussed in Chapter 6. The 1901
identification of the villa as a collector’s paradise is indebted (in part) to the cultural background of the 19th
century and its collectors’ attitudes towards aesthetics and antiquity. The statuary objects of this villa are precisely those that early modern collectors sought to possess. This does not mean that Chiragan was not home to a collector. Rather, we must re-contextualize the villa in its ancient landscape. If we trace the biography of this assemblage to the present era, the Chiragan assemblage does have the aura of a collection in our modern understanding of the word. Its statuary comprises 95% of the figural sculpture on display in Toulouse’s Musée Saint-Raymond and was instrumental in the museum’s creation in the mid-20th century
(see Balty and Cazes 2005, 11-21; before the mid-20th century the pieces were housed in Toulouse’s Musée
des Augustins, now primarily reserved for arts of the middle ages and early modern sculptures). Approximately 60-80 marbles are on display at any given time, while the rest are housed in the storage depots and graciously open to researchers. Other marble objects in the museum are relatively scarce (a few objects from ancient Tolosa and several funerary stelae and inscriptions from the city and surrounding area).
115 Chiragan is somewhat of an anomaly, and thus whether or not it proves any rules of “collection” is
to the purported collection. 116 At the two Iberian villas with late-mythological statuettes,
Quinta das Longas and Valdetorres de Jarama, “collection” is as much about the quality
of the pieces as it is about the mythological iconography and meaning.117 The statuettes
look similar to material from Eastern workshops, such that both point to owners of a
similar elite background and have been linked to the trans-elite world which Lea Stirling
highlights in Aquitaine, despite obvious differences in chronology and location among
the villas.
For Aquitaine, Stirling cites figures like Ausonius and the paideia of late antiquity as evidence for elite interest in statuettes as collectable objects, correlating their
circulation in the West (as Eastern imports) with elite demand.118 Stirling herself makes
several valid points, but her work has taken on a life of its own and has permitted postulations that any and all statuary assemblages in late antique “private” contexts
evince elite collection, regardless of whether the statues are late-mythological imports or
not.119 In archaeology, however, the impetus to collect is inherently difficult to identify
and must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
As a field of inquiry collection studies are a product of the last generation of
research, rooted in study of the origins of early modern collections and the rise of
116 El Ruedo see Vaquerio Gil and Noguera Céldran 1995, 133-34; 1997 passim. Studies of program in
ancient art history are drawing increasing criticism amidst rising interest in reception studies and acknowledgement of changing meanings and viewing audiences over time.
117 Valdetorres de Jarama (Puerta, Ángel Elvira, and Artigas 1994); Quinta das Longas (Carvalho, Nogales
Basarrante and Almeida 2004); see Chapter 2 for a discussion of both.
118 Stirling 2005, pages 138-64 in particular.
museology.120 Modern collection studies presume that certain objects (especially artistic
or aesthetic objects) have intrinsic value(s), whether inherent or applied. A collection of
objects does not exist in and of itself, and is rather the product of human impetus and
agency. Thus study of early modern and contemporary or museum collections pays
special attention to the socio-historical profile of persons involved in the formation of
said collection, whether the named entity is an individual, institution, or place.121 The last
two generations of ancient studies scholars have joined this discussion and their
dependence on the aesthetic and cultural habits of early modern and contemporary
collecting is apparent.
IV.2.a Literary Testimony on Collecting in the Roman World
By virtue of the agent-object connection, ancient studies are heavily dependent on literary
sources to shed light on the people who collected, and on the social history of collecting
in the Roman world. Most collecting scholarship focuses on the Roman Republic and
early Empire for which we have a great deal of source information. Roman conquest,
120 The study of art collections begins with interest in Renaissance collections, the bibliography of which is
extensive, cf. Weiss 1980; Alsop 1982. Study of collections and collection practices also plays an important role in the study of museums (cf. Oxford’s History of the Journal of Collection Studies) and ongoing debates of cultural property and the place of universal museums (cf. Cuno 2008). Many of the United States’ premier museums of ancient art – the Getty Institute, Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – have flourishing programs of cultural heritage studies, advocating education about the place of collecting culture in an increasingly nationalistic world.
121 Studies of the “collector” are pervasive in early modern and contemporary collection studies, which
immediately puts ancient scholars and archaeologists in particular at a disadvantage. With respect to art, interest in the collector is rooted in the industry itself and the role played by patrons of the art from the Renaissance to the present era.
spolia and booty have been read as the forebears of Roman collection practices.122
Conquest in the East during the Republic coincides with the influx of Greek and
Hellenistic culture and foreign arts. Huge slippage between private and public collecting
seems to have developed in this era, and parallels broader discussions of public and
private in the Roman world.123
Public collections are perhaps easier to identify in both literature and archaeology,
and provide important evidence for collecting as a habit of and for the Roman people. We
know from reports in the age of Roman conquest that spolia and war booty were
regularly displayed in public venues like temples and shrines, where they were dedicated
in honor of the gods and for the benefit of the local populace.124 In the late-Republic and
early Imperial era, sources argue, greater efforts are made to make “art” available to the
public.125 Museum-like spaces are created through dedications by the Republic’s political
122 Beard 2007; Miles 2008.
123 Literature of the late Republic has received inordinate amounts of scholarly attention, and Cicero’s Verrines has played a particularly important role, cf. Lazzeretti 2014; Bournia 2004, 269-303; Miles 2008, 105-51; 2014; Liverani 2014. See also Gruen 1994, chapter 3 for thoughtful scholarly analysis of private collecting in the Republic as something more than moral decline.
124 The earliest report of Roman conquest and the dedication of spoils is Livy’s account of the conquest of
Veii under Camillus in 396, which brought Juno to the Capitoline. Janus entered Rome in the conquest of the Falerii in 241. Conquest, in these examples, is couched in evocatio, see Gruen 1994, Miles 2008, 24ff. Both see evocatio as a veil for conquest, though they acknowledge that religious undertones were present from the beginning. Josephine Shaya has recently suggested (2014) that the tradition of dedicating spoils has Greek precedence. We should take care to note that in the Roman world, the influx of artistic booty likely coincides with the production of new arts in both Rome and the Hellenistic world (see Pollitt 1986 for what is still an excellent survey of art in the Hellenistic Age). Whether the production or importation of then-contemporary art works was inspired or influenced in part by the influx of war booty, however, is another question in itself.
125 Particularly instrumental to this argument is the evolving landscape of Rome under Augustus (see
Zanker 2002; Haselberger 2002) and the work of Agrippa at the Saepta Iulia amidst the purported suggestion that private collections be made public for the good of the people (Plut. Luc. 39; Pliny HN
frontrunners, and from the mid-1st century BCE on entire structures gain new importance
as (among other things) settings for art: the Theater-Portico of Pompey,126 the Saepta
Iulia, the Porticus Octavia, the libraries of Asinius Pollio, and the Forum of Augustus. In
the Imperial era, these structures continued to stand, alongside later Imperial fora, public
gardens and bath complexes as venues for communal art collections, the display of which
reified Rome as capital of the world and its citizens as culturally dominant.127 I note,
however, that all of these collections are securely associated with a place, time, and
named persons.128
It is harder to synthesize a history of private collecting in the Roman world, given
literary biases and a relative dearth of domestic archaeology. Modern scholarship relies
heavily on Cicero for attitudes towards private collecting, whether derived from his
prosecution of Verres or from his personal correspondence. 129 His letters to Atticus about
the decoration of his villa in Tusculum are particularly illuminating, in that they point to
channels of acquisition, that is, art agents and an exported statuary market, and decorum
courts as models of both private and public collection and benefactions, well before Augustus (Kuttner 1995; 1999; 2014).
126 See Gleason 1994 and Kuttner 1999 for particularly thoughtful analyses of Pompey’s theatre complex as
a public space for art and culture.
127 For Rome and its “museums” see Strong 1973; Rutledge 2012.
128 So too is the function of such venues as “museums” entirely dependent on modern scholarship and
museography, see above nt. 87.
129 Cic. Verr.; Ad Att. i.6; i.8, i.10. In the prosecution of Verres, Cicero is careful to paint Verres’ collecting
habits as egregious, in that he takes objects from public settings and away from a wider audience. See bibliography in nt. 123; also Valenti 1936. See also Lafon 1981 for “habits” of Republican villa decoration as gleaned from literature.
as the motivation behind decoration schemes.130 Yet whether Cicero’s ideas are
applicable to other elite in the Late Republic, let alone in periods beyond the 1st century
BCE is unclear.131
In the Late Republic and Imperial era we glimpse a spectrum of collector-types and personal preferences among the biographies of Rome’s cultural elite: Lucullus and
the adornment of his country estates,132 Hortensius and his taste for Corinthian
bronzes,133 and Novius Vindex and his pedigreed Hercules statuette,134 to name a few.
Other texts satirize selfish and aspiring collectors, from the most infamous freedman of
literary Rome, Trimalchio,135 to the Emperor himself.136 In late antiquity, Ausonius has
130 Cicero writes to Atticus that a Hermathena would be appropriate (dignum) for his Academy, while a
bacchant statuette would not (Ad. Att. i.9, i.11). Certain genres of statuary, Cicero seems to suggest, serve as appropriate decorative elements if the genre is suitable for the setting.
131 The precise means by which statues, paintings, and silver objects were acquired is seldom noted, such
that Cicero’s letters to Atticus are an anomaly. However, art acquisition under Cicero is not portrayed as the work ofan ardent collector by any modern means, contraValenti 1936. Cicero’s interest in decorum
lacks the aesthetic drive we ascribe to collectors in the late antique or early modern period, again calling for a more nuanced look at ancient habits of collecting.
132 The fishponds, dining habits, and many villas of the Late Republican general Lucullus were infamous
(Plut. Luc.; Pliny HN IX.80; Varro De Res Rus.1.2.10 (Lucullus’ pinacotheca). Plutarch’s life of Lucullus
is particularly interesting in light of the public/private collection debate in the late Republic, because Lucullus’ eccentric private life in no way overshadows his professional military accomplishments. Plutarch suggests that this was merely the other side of the coin. His biography is written nearly two centuries later, but this adds weight to Gruen’s argument that cries of moral decadence are a project in and of themselves, with art objects a mere pawn in a larger debate (1994). See also Miles 2008, 208-26 for discussion of Lucullus.
133 Pliny the Elder (HN 34.38) mentions Hortensius’ lust in a larger discussion of Corinthian bronzes and
the desire they incited among collectors. Pliny mentions that Hortensius carried a sphinx around with him in his pocket, as did the ex-consul Gaius Cestius. The emperor Nero carrieda round an Amazon statuette. Pliny the Younger mentions that Corinthian bronzes had become harder to come by in the early 2nd century.
His friend Spurrina liked Corinthian bronze dinnerware, though did not consider himself a collector (Pliny the Younger, Ep. 3.1)
134 Mart. Epi. 9.43-44; 12.69; Stat. Silvae 4.6 135 Petr. Sat. 26-78 (Cena Trimalchionis).
136 Tiberius is infamous for having taken the famous Apoxyomenos of Lysippos off public display only to
been presented as a model for the later collector-type based on occasional references in
his poetry to objects that stood in his home, and several epigrams on famous art works like Myron’s heifer.137
Taken together, a summary of these literary portraits would suggest that private
collections were indeed the purview of the wealthy Roman elite. Soo too were art objects
at times acquired for particular reasons or inherent values (ancestry or genealogy,
symbolic meaning, material value), or as generic evocations of decorum and
appropriateness.138 As literary projects in their own right, however, we must acknowledge
that synthesis of these private collections is dependent on the individuals with whom they
are associated and. Rarely in the literary evidence on collections are we given
(Auetonius, Tib. LVXX, 2). Nero is presented as both a greedy collector and “artist” in biographies (Sue. Nero; Tac. Annals XIII, 3)
137 But links between these poetic instances of art emulation and statuary ownership, and physical
collections of larger objects or even a collecting habit are unsubstantiated. Stirling discusses several of Ausonius’ epigrams on Myron’s heifer (Epig. 63-71) and the Knidia of Praxiteles (Epig. 22, 45-47, 50, 51, 62) in her book (2005, 148), but even she notes that these pieces are a better demonstration of Ausonius’