Commentaries: I: Some afterthoughts on Naples and antiquarian culture in the eighteenth century

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IS it appropriate to speak of a specific Neapolitan approach when studying eighteenth-century antiquarianism? If one thinks of the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, the answer will of course be in the affirmative. Three centuries on, the material discovered in those early investigations continues to inspire research of international significance. The contribution to these essays by Paola D’Alconzo, on restoration and the presentation of the Vesuvian wall paintings bears this out most explicitly. There is equally no doubt about the originality and importance of the Neapolitan collections of ancient vases formed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the past ten years, Claire Lyons and Maria Emilia Masci have demonstrated their precursory role, forcing us to reconsider how novel the collections assembled by Sir William Hamilton in the second half of the century really were. More generally, vases have been accorded a new status in the field of antiquarian...