Antiquity and antiquarianism

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On December 7, 1748, Marsili wrote to his friend Gennari: "I had the medal you sent me examined, but it is not possible to detect the reverse side. Perhaps there must have been a mistake in the transcription. Mr. Apostolo [editor's note, Zeno] believes it to be of Lodovico the Pious, and that which you believe to be a cipher, is nothing but a crude model of an ancient temple, as can be seen from several examples in the book that Monsieur le Blanc wrote about the coins of the Kings of France. On February 4, 1751, he tells Gennari of "a legitimate inscription, very ancient without any faults, and worthy of reflection. It is walled up in a house in the surroundings of Gemona, where I also observed with great pleasure that stone vase that you know of, where they used to baptize by immersion. The most preposterous figures you ever saw are carved, and there is a nose that equals all the rest of the body". Only two of the many attestations that confirm Marsili’s constant interest in antiquities, epigraphy, the archaeological evidence of Greek and Latin culture and the material culture of the ancients, as confirmed by one of the handwritten notes collected here with a series of transcriptions of some Aquileian epigraphs.


Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Capriccio con il Pantheon Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Capriccio con il Pantheon, XVIII century (Photo Ωméga, via Flickr)

PAGE INDEX

Otto Van Veen, Amorum emblemata (1608)

The emblematica (emblem studies) is that science that combines together mottos and texts – often in verse and in Latin – with an allegorical image, to form almost a symbiosis in which each of the elements illuminates and clarifies the other; developed after the publication in 1531 of the Emblematum libri by Andrea Alciato, it had great popularity throughout Europe, especially in the seventeenth century, also influencing alchemical, mnemonic and even scientific thought: among the numerous books in the Marsili collection, therefore, there is also a curious first edition of the Amorum Emblemata of Otto van Veen (1556–1629), who was a teacher of Rubens. The volume is in oblong format that contains 124 emblems, that is, symbolic images, in which the various aspects of love are illustrated; the lyrics are on the opposite page from these incisions, and consist of mottos and quotations mostly inspired by the Latin poet Ovid. The texts were published in two versions at the same time: Latin-French-Dutch (on display) and Latin-Italian-French, and in a second edition also Latin-English-Italian, gaining a wide popularity and becoming a source of inspiration for artists from all over Europe.

van Veen Two pages from the Amorum emblemata (from Phaidra)

Johann Jakob Lucke, Sylloge numismatum elegantiorum (1620)

Lucke (1574–1653), a genealogist and numismatist of Strasbourg, was commissioned to study the history of the most important families of that city, a study that also engaged him in some trips in Germany, in the Countries of the North and in Switzerland; the result was a monumental work in 41 folio volumes. Among Marsili’s books there is his own work Sylloge numismatum elegantiorum, in the princeps del 1620 (with the title page engraved by Aubry and the illustrations by Friedrich Brentel), in which he gives an account of the most remarkable pieces of his rich collection of medals and coins, also the fruit of gifts received from important personalities he met, presenting numismatics as a science supporting history and biography.

Lucke-1 Lucke-2 Sylloge numismatum elegantiorum, details (from Phaidra)

Sertorio Orsato, Monumenta Patavina (1652)

The noble and Paduan historian Sertorio Orsato (1616–1678), published a real tribute of affection to his city, printing the Monumenta Patavina thanks to which he also obtained the title of Knight of the Venetian Republic: the work, that lists and illustrates with 53 woodcut and copper images inscriptions, reliefs, antiquities and all kinds of monuments of the noble Roman past of Livio's homeland, opens on the particularly well-preserved allegorical frontispiece, signed Johan Georg Bel, which also includes the portrait of the Author in the medallion.

Orsato Orsato The portrait of the author and a table from the Monumenta Patavina (from Phaidra)

Lorenzo Patarol, Series Augustorum... (1722)

A friend of Vallisneri and Pontedera, , and the owner of a splendid botanical garden attached to his Venetian palace near the Madonna dell'Orto where he kept, among his many treasures, also a herbarium composed between 1717 and 1719, which is today kept at the Museum of Natural History, Lorenzo Patarol (1620–1724) was a multifaceted and curious scientist. To publish the iconographic series Series Augustorum, Augustarum, Cesarum... – an expression of his historical interests – he made use of his own conspicuous numismatic collection; it is a publication that could not escape the attention of an antiquarian like Marsili.

Giandomenico Bertoli, Le antichità d' Aquileia (1739)

Among the volumes of the Prefect there is a great antiquarian classic, the work the canonical Giandomenico Bertoli (1676–1763), one of his countrymen; Bertoli, a passionate investigator of the Roman antiquities of which the Aquileian territory is rich, was a collector of epigraphs he collected in his house and of which he gave news in this volume; Bertoli commissioned his brother Daniele Antonio, cartographer of Maria Teresa of Austria, to illustrate the volume.

Bertol’s home in Aquileia, a historic building that dates back to the thirteenth century, but stands on an ancient Roman villa perhaps inhabited by a surgeon, is now home to the Centro di Antichità Altoadriatiche to which are owed the promotion of studies and research on history, archeology, and the art and linguistics of the northern Adriatic area from prehistory to the Middle Ages.

Bertoli-2 Bertoli-1 Frontispiece and title page of Le antichità di Aquileia (from Phaidra)

Thomas Bartholin, De unicornu (1678)

An opera midway between a mythological treatise and an account of marvels, with a pinch of fantastic zoology and a taste for the monstrous: the De unicornu by Thomas Bartholin (1619–1680) in which the author examines the entire historical phenomenon, both ancient and modern, of unicorns and bicorns, documented iconographically or from documents, both among animals and in the human species.

De unicornu Pages of De unicornu (from Phaidra)

Fernand Ludwig von Bressler und Aschenburg, Li sovrani del mondo (1729)

"They pretend to some coat-of-arms, and say, I am of such a family, and my ancestors did so and so", Boccaccio wrote in the eighth novel of the seventh day: the study of heraldry, of crests and blazons, is a study of history seen through the creation and unravelling of the bonds between families and dynasties that go towards building the small history of the city up to that of empires. Here in Marsili's collection there is also the second edition of Li sovrani del mondo, a treatise on genealogy and heraldry by Fernand Ludwig von Bressler und Aschenburg, a bourgeois who joined the Bohemian nobility and who had studied in Halle and Leipzig, travelling in Holland, England and Germany between 1705 and 1706.