The San Vito Tomb at Pozzuoli

Abstract

In addition to the series of stucco reliefs recently acquired on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, to three stuccoed panels from the Hartwig collection, and to a few miscellaneous pieces, the British Museum's Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities possesses nine large and eight smaller fragments of stucco-relief work about whose acquisition almost nothing is recorded. Till recently, they were not entered in the Department's Register, and had no accession numbers: the only distinguishing marks were blue diamond-shaped tabs stuck to five of them, and the numbers 63 and 99 scratched on the backs of two. Blue diamonds occur on several ancient objects which formed part of the collection of Sir William Hamilton, so it is possible that the stuccoes once belonged to the same illustrious antiquary. Indeed, a British Museum catalogue of 1817 definitely ascribes one of them to the Hamilton collection, and also reveals, in conjunction with a manuscript of 1824, that the remaining pieces were kept in the so-called ‘Hamilton Room’, most of whose contents had formerly been owned by Sir William.