Classical Sculpture and the Enlightenment

The Grand Tour took many people of taste and wealth to Italy in the eighteenth century and encouraged the collecting of antique works of art. This program concentrates on one important British collector, Charles Townley, whose collection of marbles is in the British Museum. Gerard Vaughan of Oxford University talks to Colin Cunningham of the Open University about a number of Townley's most important marbles. They discuss the problems of interpreting the subject of sculptures, including the work of the eighteenth-century scholar Winckelmann, the question of restoration and the difficulties of exporting major works from Italy. Publications illustrating Greek and Roman works of art influenced British taste, as did the displays of the works themselves by Townley and other collectors. Among the volumes shown in the programs are the works from Pompeii and Herculaneum published by the King of Naples, and Townley's own catalog of the collection displayed in his private house.

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