The Wilton House sculptures constituted one of the largest and most celebrated collections of ancient art in Europe. Originally comprising some 340 works, the collection was formed around the late 1710s and 1720s by Thomas Herbert, the eccentric 8th Earl of Pembroke, who stubbornly 're-baptized' his busts and statues with names of his own choosing. His sources included the famous collection of Cardinal Mazarin, assembled in Paris in the 1640s and 1650s, and recent discoveries on the Via Appia outside Rome. Earl Thomas regarded the sculptures as ancient - some of them among the oldest works of art in existence - but in fact much of the collection is modern and represents the neglected talents of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century artists, restorers and copyists who were inspired by Greek and Roman sculpture.About half of the original collection remains intact today, adorning the Gothic Cloisters that were built for it two centuries ago. After a long decline, accelerated by the impact of the Second World War, the sculptures have been rehabilitated in recent years. They include masterpieces of Roman and early modern art, which cast fresh light on Graeco-Roman antiquity, the classical tradition, and the history of collecting.Illustrated with specially commissioned photographs, this catalogue offers the first comprehensive publication of the 8th Earl's collection, including an inventory of works dispersed from Wilton. It re-presents his personal vision of the collection recorded in contemporary manuscripts. At the same time, it dismantles some of the myths about it which originated with the earl himself, and provides an authoritative archaeological and art-historical analysis of the artefacts.

Exploring the various forms taken by sculpture collections, this volume presents new research on collectors, modes of display, and the aesthetics of viewing sculpture, making a notable addition to the literature on the history of sculpture and art collecting as a cultural phenomenon.

This book considers Gandhāran art in relation to its religious contexts and meanings within ancient Buddhism. Addressing the responses of patrons and worshippers at the monasteries and shrines of Gandhāra, papers seek to understand more about why Gandhāran art was made and what its iconographical repertoire meant to ancient viewers.

Volume Five: This catalogue of a private collection includes works by such artists as Vermeer, Rubens, Renoir, La Tour, the Tiepolos, El Greco, Canaletto, and Van Dyck. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

From the archaeologists and smugglers of the Raj to the museums of post-partition Pakistan and India, from coin-forgers and contraband to modern Buddhism and contemporary art, this fourth volume of the Gandhāra Connections project presents the most recent research on the factors that mediate our encounter with Gandhāran art.

This is a book about classical sculptures in the early modern period, centuries after the decline and fall of Rome, when they began to be excavated, restored, and collected by British visitors in Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century. Viccy Coltman contrasts the precarious and competitive culture of eighteenth-century collecting, which integrated sculpture into the domestic interior back home in Britain, with the study and publication of individual specimens by classical archaeologists like Adolf Michaelis a century later. Her study is comprehensively illustrated with over 100 photographs.