The Canino Connections

Starting in the year 1828, Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, unearthed more than 2000 Greek vases on his estate near the ancient Etruscan town of Vulci. The vases were restored and found their way to archaeological collections all around the world. This volume publishes 10 papers by scholars of international repute dealing with these ceramics.
The papers were presented in 2015 at a colloquium in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, which acquired 96 vases from the Bonaparte collection in 1839. Specialists in the fields of museum history, Greek vase-painting, restoration and 19th century collecting practices from the Netherlands, France, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Italy and Russia have contributed to this volume, which offers the newest insights into the person of Lucien Bonaparte, his excavation practices, the history of restorations and the selling and buying of Greek ceramics in the 19th century.
The results have helped to extend our knowledge of the collectors, traders and scholars, who were concerned with Greek vases during the 19th century. Their activities took place in a pivotal period, in which the black- and red figure ceramics, which had come to light in Italy during the previous centuries, were finally assigned to Greek craftsmanship instead of to Etruscan manufacture.
The book also contains a concise photographic catalogue illustrating the highlights of the Leiden Canino collection.

Table of Contents

Wim Weijland
Foreword

Pieter ter Keurs
Lucien Bonaparte and the Politics of Collecting

Alessandra Costantini
Lucien Bonaparte, the Archaeologist-Prince

Anne Viole Siebert
Staying at Musignano: August Kestner and the excavations of the Principe di Canino

Anna Petrakova
Canino vases in the State Hermitage Museum: the history of purchasing

Ruurd Halbertsma and Jos van Heel
Greek vases in The Hague and Leiden: the sale of Canino vases in 1839

Vinnie Nørskov
The Canino Auctions – the unidentified vases

Friederike Bubenheimer-Erhart
The appreciation of black- and red-figure vases and other pottery wares according to the Canino documents

Marie-Amélie Bernard
Without adding any line of drawing – The restoration of the Canino vases: principles, reality and actors

Renske Dooijes and Marianna Düring
The Canino Collection: Historical Restorations on Greek vases in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden

Anastasia Bukina
Restorations on the Canino vases of the Hermitage museum


Photographic catalogue of highlights of the Leiden Canino collection

"Prof. Dr. Ruurd Binnert Halbertsma (1958) is curator in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and organiser of the international colloquium on the vase collection of Lucien Bonaparte in 2015.

His main interest lies in the origin and history of the collections of classical art in European collections. Besides his appointment as curator, Halbertsma is professor at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

key publications

2003: Scholars, Travellers and Trade – The Pioneer Years of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, 1818-1840, Londen-New York (182 pp., uitg. Routledge).

2007: Niederländische Sammlungen antiker Skulptur in historischer Perspektive: Ruhm, Frömmigkeit und Wissenschaft, Kölner Jahrbuch 40, 45-55.

2008: Creating Antiquity: from an Archaeological Cabinet to a National Museum in the Netherlands, Leiden 1818-1840, in: Tsingarida, A./Verbanck-Piérard (edd.), L’Antiquité au service de la Modernité? La reception de l’antiquité classique en Belgique au XIXe siècle, actes du Colloque international organisé du 27 au 29 avril 2005 à l’Université libre de Bruxelles et au Musée royal de Mariemont, Bruxelles (Le Livre Timperman), 65-79.

2014: Greek Vases in the Low Countries. An Assessment of Collecting Policies, in: Schmidt, S./Steinhart, M. (edd.), Sammeln und Erforschen – Griechische Vasen in neuzeitlichen Sammlungen, Beihefte zum Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Band VI, München, 73-83.

2015: Nulli tam laeti triumphi – Constantine’s victory on a reworked cameo in Leiden, BABesch 90, 221-235.

2015: Fluctuating Boundaries – Collecting Policies in 19th century archaeological and ethnological museums, in: Dries, M.H./Van der Linden, S.J./Strecker, A. (edd), Fernweh. Crossing Borders and Connecting People in Archaeological Heritage Management. Essays in Honour of Prof. Willem J.H. Willems, 153 – 156.

2017: The Netherlands and Tunisia: archaeological investigations in the 19th century, in: Dridi, H./A. Mezzolani Andreose (eds.), Under Western Eyes – Approches occidentales de l’archéologie nord-africaine (XIXe-XXe siècles), Bologna, 49-65.
"