Printed for a King, Gifted to a Prince: Albert of Sachsen-Teschen’s copy of the Antichità di Ercolano
In the forthcoming issue of PrPh’s Italian Books catalogue, we are proud to present a superb set of nine wide-margined volumes – printed on thick paper and magnificently bound for the well-known bibliophile and art collector, Prince Albrecht Kasimir August von Sachsen-Teschen (1738-1822) – containing the first edition of the Antichità di Ercolano esposte, a monumental work devoted to archaeological findings from the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, accidentally discovered in 1709, as well as from the sites of Pompeii and Stabiae (for the complete description click here). The work represents the grandest, most important, and most splendid work issued in eighteenth-century Naples, in an impressive publishing initiative which reflects the economic, social, and cultural progress of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under Charles VII of Bourbon (1716-1788), later Charles III, King of Spain. It also represents the most relevant source for the development of neo-classical art, significantly contributing to the growing fascination among scholars, artists, and travelers, with the magnificent antiquities around Naples.
The nine volumes comprising the Antichità di Ercolano were printed between 1755 and 1792 by the Stamperia Reale, the royal publishing house founded for this purpose by Charles VII in 1750, which then owned 800,000 types and six printing presses. The vast, and ambitious project involved several scholars and artists. The explanatory texts were edited by the accademici ercolanesi, i.e. the members of the Royal Herculaneum Academy, founded on 13 December 1755, and annexed to the Royal Museum at Portici, near Naples.
The reports were supplemented with magnificent engraved plates by prominent artists of the time: along with the Roman Camillo Paderni (1715-1781), director of the Royal Herculaneum Museum, over fifty artists and engravers were involved in executing the 609 plates illustrating the volumes, including the celebrated architect of the Caserta Palace Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-1777), the famous German painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779), the printmaker and future professor at the Dresden Academy Giovanni Battista Casanova (1730-1795), and the talented engraver Filippo Morghen (1730-1807), among others.
The present set is exceptionally complete with the Catalogo dei monumenti dissotterrati dalla città discoperta di Ercolano per ordine della maestà di Carlo re delle due Sicilie by the archaeologist from Parma Ottavio Antonio Baiardi or Bayardi (1695-1764), who had been entrusted with its compilation in 1746. The Catalogo was printed in 1755, and is often lacking in the recorded sets: it briefly describes more than two thousand monuments, paintings, bronzes, lamps, candelabras, and other artefacts unearthed in the recently discovered town, the excavations of which had begun in 1738.
The frontispiece of the first volume of the Antichità di Ercolano, published in 1757 and devoted to the discovery of paintings and ornaments, features a fine portrait of Charles III engraved by Filippo Morghen after a drawing by Paderni with numerous symbols of the excavations carried out while he was King of Naples, including papyrus scrolls, a bust of Epicurus, vessels and coins, a pick and a shovel. It also includes the inscription uncovered in the theatre, including the word ‘Herculanenses’, which enabled excavators to identify the town brought to light as Herculaneum.
The volumes were issued from the Stamperia Reale on behalf of Charles III, and were known at the time as ‘the Books of the King’. In fact, they were intended not to be put on the market, but rather to be gifted to monarchs, princes, and other outstanding and powerful figures on the European scene, and to learned institutions, with the aim of disseminating information on the spectacular excavations patronized by the Spanish monarchy, and therefore to show the cultural prestige of the Bourbon House across Europe. Generally, these gifted volumes are housed in a fine binding executed by Neapolitan artisans active for the Stamperia Reale, with their covers stamped with the royal coat of arms of Spain.
The owner of the present set – Albrecht Kasimir August von Sachsen-Teschen – was certainly one of the illustrious recipients of the monumental Antichità di Ercolano.
Albrecht Kasimir August von Sachsen-Teschen, by an unknown painter (1777). Albertina, Vienna.
Prince Albert of Sachsen-Teschen (1738-1822) was the son of Friedrich August II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Maria Josepha of Austria. His sister, the learned Maria Amalia (1724-1760), had married Charles VII of Bourbon in 1738, thereby establishing a close dynastic tie between these European houses.
The finely printed and lavishly illustrated volumes of the Antichità di Ercolano could not find a more fitting recipient. Albert had a well-known taste for the arts: his impressive collection of prints and drawings was one of the richest in all of Europe, and he became the founder of the eponymous Albertina in Vienna, which to this day continues to be located in the palace acquired by the Prince in 1795 for housing his graphic collection. He is also credited with assembling one of the most complete collections of illustrated books issued from the presses of leading European printers. In 1766, Albert married his cousin, Maria Christina of Austria (1742-1798), daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, who was, likewise, a great lover and patron of the arts.
Detail of The young Maria Christina of Austria, by Martin van Meytens (1750). Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Budapest.
Between 1775 and 1776, Albert and Maria Christina travelled to Italy, where they stayed for a few months in Naples as the guests of the new King of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinando IV (1751-1825), and his wife Maria Carolina, the sister of Maria Christina herself. There, the couple visited the sites of both the Pompeii and Herculaneum excavations, guided by none other than the British envoy-extraordinary in Naples, Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), celebrated diplomat, antiquarian, and volcanologist, and author of the Campi Phlegraei, published precisely in 1776. Hamilton’s own remarkable collection of antiquities, consisting mainly of precious vases, was housed in his Neapolitan residence in Palazzo Serra.
That same year, 1776, the great artist and first President of the Royal Academy of Arts Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) painted the famous portrait of Hamilton now in the National Gallery in London. Reynolds represents the British envoy as an intellectual, with a book of antiquities in his hands, showing a Roman fresco – inspired by one of the plates included in the lavishly illustrated publication Antiquités etrusques, grecques et romaines tirées di cabinet de M. Hamilton, which appeared in Naples in 1766/67. Behind Hamilton is a large window looking out onto Mount Vesuvius, while his special taste for the relics of Antiquity is symbolized by an amphora in the foreground.
Sir William Hamilton, by Joshua Reynolds (1776). National Gallery, London.
Albert of Sachsen-Teschen shared with Hamilton the same enthusiasm for the classical world and the same exquisite taste in collecting, and he is often likewise portrayed holding books or prints. The two collectors exchanged letters, books, and artworks, and in Prince Albert’s rich library, the bookshelves were spaced out by antique vases, many of which he had obtained directly from Naples through his English friend. The prince may even have been informed by Hamilton himself about the progress of the publishing initiative related to the Hercolaneum excavations, and it is possible that he personally received some volumes of the Antichità di Ercolano during his stay in Naples. A painting executed in 1776 by Friedrich Heinrich Füger and displayed in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna features Albert and his wife Maria Christina showing the Empress Maria Theresa a selection of art works brought back from their Italian Grand Tour of 1775/76.
Detail of Albrecht Kasimir August von Sachsen-Teschen and his wife Maria Christina, by Friedrich Heinrich Füger (1776). Schloss Belvedere, Vienna.
The prince, however, ultimately preferred to receive the volumes unbound, so that he could choose a binding more befitting his personal taste, one that would be superbly executed by his principal binder, the Viennese master Georg Friedrich Krauss.
In 1781, Gottfried von Rotenstein visited the library amassed by Albert in his palace in Bratislava, and later included a description of it in his Lust-Reise durch Bayern, Würtemberg, Pfalz, Sachsen, Brandenburg, Oesterreich, Mähren, Böhmen und Ungarn (Leipzig 1792-1793):
“The library was voluminous and well chosen. It included the most outstanding engravings, some of which the duke received as gifts from Saxony, France, Naples and Rome, and some that he himself acquired on his travels through Italy. On the top of the bookcases, interspersed with some very beautiful vases, stand the most noteworthy alabaster ‘modelie’ [models, modelli] of statues, of which some [of the originals] are in Rome or Florence, others in Herculaneum”
(English transl. from: I. Ciulisová, Men of Taste. Essays in Art Collecting on East-Central Europe, Bratislava 2014, pp. 28-29).
Amidst this impressive scene, the splendid set of the Antichità di Ercolano, with the ‘AST’ monogram stamped in gilt on the spines, could display its magnificence in the best possible way, along with another volume presented by PrPh in a previous catalogue, in another fine binding tooled by Krauss with a gilt Greek-key roll: the Anacreon in sedicesimo issued in Parma in 1791 by Giambattista Bodoni, one of the finest Greek editions produced by the great Italian printer and punchcutter. A small book which embodies – albeit in a very different scale – the same exquisite taste and devotion to Antiquity exhibited by the Prince and his marvellous set of the Antichità di Ercolano esposte.
How to cite this information
Margherita Palumbo, “Printed for a King, Gifted to a Prince: Albert of Sachsen-Teschen’s copy of the Antichità di Ercolano,” PRPH Books, 20 November 2019, https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/antichita-di-ercolano. Accessed [date].This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.