Roman antiquities and the emergence of Renaissance civic collections

Abstract

This paper examines the evidence for new fifteenth- and sixteenth-century civic collections of Roman antiquities. It argues that these collections, mostly in small towns on the Italian peninsula and in southern France, have been overlooked in favour of princely and ecclesiastical collections, but that they offer important early evidence for communal commitment to the protection of the past. They build on medieval traditions of collection and display, but also reflect new humanist interest in classical antiquity and its preservation.