What I Am Reading: "Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present" by Erin L. Thompson

This book is about the history of private collectors of antiquities, specifically those of Greek and Roman origin. I had read of its author, Erin Thompson, a few times, in articles about looting. She is oft-cited as the country's "only professor of art crimes." I recently watched an Atlas Obscura live event featuring her (not having connected the name to the person initially), and decided to see if she had any books of interest.

The thesis of this book is to push back against the idea that private collectors of antiquities do so merely in pursuit of social prestige. This book draws on primary sources, the words of collectors themselves, to proffer several other motivations for collection, with the hope that, since collection of course continues to this day and is a major driver of archaeological looting, that these insights may help better understand the problem. The book covers how some collectors have been motivated to collect antiquities in order to better express their identity, form social networks, express a form of eroticism or other connection to figures of the past, or for the educational or moral benefit of the public. The book also covers the historical patterns in another side-effect of collection: the restoration or outright forgery of items.

With all of these subjects, I thought while reading that perhaps the book is a bit too compartmentalized. It does a deep dive into each topic specifically; not a problem in itself, but I think that without an outright chronological overview, at least as an introduction, there are some overarching narratives around collecting that don't receive the attention they deserve. For example: each of the subject chapters focuses on a few specific collectors, and many of these collectors were 18th century Britons. Thus, the subject of the Grand Tour is raised repeatedly, a coming-of-age ritual / graduation present whereby the children of British aristocracy and gentry (as well as aristos of other nationalities) would progress across Europe, visiting at least the most accessible classical sites. This was often an opportunity and cultural driver of antiquities collection. It is not itself, however, addressed systematically. I think that at some points, a large-picture view of the interchange between collection and the classical-loving European culture at large might have provided useful context, as that interest waxed in the 17th and 18th centuries, was interpreted differently by Enlightenment and Romantic aesthetics, and waned later in the 19th century. Maybe I am just conjuring up a different book, but these summaries needn't have been more than briefly related.

The book's deep dives on its themes are certainly illustrative, though. Private collecting in this context (again, Greek and Roman only) originates with the Romans themselves, and their pursuit of Greek artworks. Roman ideals about the selfishness of private collecting have been passed down to us, and their ideas about the malign supernatural influence of items were at least passed down to their Medieval Christian successors. The Catonians viewed Greek art as degenerate, effeminate, and unpatriotic, though connoisseurs consumed them for their artistic beauty. Roman looters weren't always collectors, and on the public scale, works were often used to confer political legitimacy (in that era, as some Alexandrian successor states related to the conqueror; and in later eras, as states related to the Greeks and Romans); or were re-consecrated for religious purposes to avoid offending the gods depicted. When the Christians muscled onto the scene, they believed in the inverse of this supernatural analysis - that antiquities were possessed by demons. This of course led to large-scale destruction, though later Christians would believe that placing these items in a Christian context could reverse their pagan implications. In the face of constant mistrust, though, Medieval Christians always needed an excuse for collecting - a collector pope was waved off as just making financial investments, scholars only needed to study, and aesthetes were possessed by the beauty against their will.

One of the main drives for collectors, according to Thompson, was and is the desire to express one's identity. Starting in Italy in the millennium after the Romans, some (specifically in this case the cattle baron bovattieri) used antiquities to counterfeit a literal connection to the past, in connivance against their socially-superior aristocrats who actually held such connections. As the study of history grew more thorough and sophisticated, this literal creation of identity was replaced by a spiritual use of antiquities to create identity. This spread to the British through the Earl of Arundel in the early 17th century. Arundel was a taste-setter, seeking a way to display his wealth and influence after he fell out of political favor. Beyond just purchasing, he was willing to have antiquities dug up, or have them restored, and believed in the rationalization that collectors could appreciate antiquities more than other owners. These practices and beliefs would propagate to many other British collectors. Others later would use antiquities to express a political identity: post-Cromwell Britons and later Americans sought in Roman and Greek items an expression of their republican values.

Another practice that spread was the manipulation of works. Many antiquities were in fragments, and dealers, often fulfilling the expressed yearnings of their customers, were willing to cobble together frankensteins. Tying in to the expression of identity, fragments left alone can be interpreted flexibly, changing symbolism of many works out of their original context. Those modified of course could be even more flexible: one example given is a statute of Hermaphroditus owned by Henry Blundell, prominent British collector in the late 18th century; who had the statute castrated and the suckling infants removed, to turn the androgynous figure into a Venus. Other figures were split, recreated, recombined, or rearranged to fit spaces and needs, blurring the line, as Thompson says, between restoration and forgery. Statues became busts and vice versa, sarcophagi became flower beds. Another example of a user of such recombination was abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden. Preferring masculine attributes, the former Queen sought classical role models for women with a more masculine gender identity through a room of statutes of the Muses, all of which were repurposed statutes of other women. In here she took a place as Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, with her war-club reflecting battle and statescraft. She also sought and created portrayals of Athena, as a classical role model of a woman who did not rule a kingdom (as she herself no longer did) but instead patronized a subject area.

In addition to such manipulation, many items retrieved on Grand Tours underwent heavy cleaning and polishing, which ground down the original carving and stripped any surviving outer designs and paint from the marble. The appetite for such manipulation-as-beautification started to change with the grand Parthenon Marbles and their unaltered appearance. The damage had of course already been done, though, and 18th century aesthetic tastes color our view of classical antiquities to this day. Rome and so on looked different than popular conceptions of it.

There is no reliable way to date stone, and this prevents modern scholars from weeding out every restoration or every forgery. With, again, that blurry line, forgers were optimal for fitting what a collector wished were true about the past and their place within it. They created new items and weathered them to look old, or placed entirely new exteriors on existing cores. In an extreme version of collectors’ manipulations of the past, a few collectors were even forgers themselves, creating wholesale the collection needed to express their identity, whether this be as a prolific connoisseur, as a politico, an aesthete, whatever.

Speaking of aesthetes, some collectors were the romantic sort, and found erotic connotations to antiquities. This was one of the primary moral objections made by Catonian Romans and later Christians about ancient statutes and art: their occasionally lewd subject matter. It is a theme often found in literature: ancient statutes as the embodiment of beauty, whether used in comparison to a living subject or in accounts of appreciation of the sublime. Two prominent examples here are Sir William Hamilton, and his wife, Emma. Hamilton was the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples from 1764 to 1800, and in this role he excavated or bought copious amounts of antiquities, as well as serving as an essential social call for gentlemen on the Grand Tour. Eventually, when his nephew needed to unload her, he came to host and eventually marry the art model and society sex symbol Emma Hart, who had already been frequently, even obsessively, painted in some of the more risqué scenes from antiquity. She would take to her role as hostess in antiquarian Naples, performing “Attitudes,” or still-life reenactment of mythological/classical scenes, often scantily-clad in Grecian drapes. As she grew past her prime and he grew decrepit, the couple became figures of fun, especially as she took up (with Sir William's apparent blessing) with Admiral Horatio Nelson, fresh off fighting Napoleon and Dumas at the Battle of the Nile and soon off to commit war crimes against revolutionaries on behalf of the Neapolitan monarchy.

Emma, Lady Hamilton, in an “Attitude.” (Thomas Rowlandson, public domain, WIkimedia Commons).

Thompson describes as close to eroticism the value many collectors place on touching and handling artifacts, which museums of course prohibit. Many collectors cite touch as important in establishing a connection to the creators or users of antiquities, in many cases one that they think others wouldn't be able to appreciate. Some collectors are sourced as finding such connection and aesthetic/spiritual appreciation of mainly beautiful antiquities as more important than quotidian archaeology, which drags great classical figures down to the human level.

Others were more humanitarian-minded in their collecting, imbuing their collections (and the displays thereof) as having great social value. Holocaust survivor Elie Borowski complied a considerable collection and created a Biblical museum because of his belief that the world could be healed and reborn through the teachings of the Torah and the physical aesthetics of the Ancient Greeks. J. Paul Getty, American oil baron, thought that business success was founded on imagination and creativity, and that displayed collections would foster practical (foreign deal-making) and spiritual (imagination stimulating) business practices. His massive and rigorously curated collection would create well-rounded businessmen and well-rounded men as well, as superior form of masculinity "in the board room or the bedroom" to the "heavy-handed and maladroit...barbarian" (quoted in ch. 6).

Another example of collecting for other people is how collectors are spurred on by their collecting social network. Many enter the hobby through an antiquarian friend or relative, and connect to a network of fellow collectors, scholars, museum patrons and benefactors, and so on. Like other hobbies, collecting forms a community. In discussing these relationships, Thompson stresses that collectors usually aren't competitive, because they must rely on the same extended supply chain and because, in comparison to contemporary art, antiquities are almost a renewable resource, since more are constantly dug up. Of course, conversely, she covers a few of the more aggressive collectors, such as Isabella d'Este of 15th/16th century Mantua, who often muscled hard bargains with imperiled collectors and took advantage of changing fortunes of war to plunder (by proxy) her own relatives.

As should be clear from this summary, flouting the law is an integral part of collecting, from antiquity to this day. All collectors have dodged import restrictions through bribery and deceit, whether those of the Papal States and Ottoman Territories then or Italy and Greece now. In both situations, the government price was too high to pay, with the Papal government taking too large a cut of the findings (a choice third of any new excavation!) and of the assessed value upon export. In the modern era, after many states have replaced private property with regimes of national ownership, the antiquities market has been driven underground. Grand Tourists often bragged of their runarounds of the authorities, but in the modern market, smuggling is not documented, and many objects are devoid of provenance. Many of these are likely looted, as scholars count the number of antiquities traded as much higher than the number of those with recorded sources. In the wake of outcries against museums, collectors are the main end-point for the looting and smuggling trade.

There are many excuses for looting, whether furtive modern looting or blatant historical looting. Looting was viewed (even back to Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths) as a victimless crime; the originating countries have an overabundance of antiquities, enough that some are sitting in storerooms or the ground; the people possessing them are inferior, and the antiquities must be rescued from their abuse or ignorant neglect; only collectors, i.e. those knowledgeable about antiquities, are those capable of properly appreciating, or even loving them. I have covered earlier the sometime disdain among collectors for grubby and demythologizing archaeology.

Needless to say, archaeologists abhor all this looting, and the destruction of valuable (though not profitable) information in the process. Thompson closes the book by suggesting a few new ideas to prevent looting, other than just finger-wagging at the collectors who drive the market. She suggests that these collectors instead be channeled into patronage of excavations, as some indeed have been. She suggests that some, especially the small-scale collectors who only buy a cheap artifact or two, be educated about the proliferation of forgeries, so that they don't waste their money and can suppress that day-to-day market. She thinks that, under careful guidance, museums could allow touching and handling of artifacts, at least those that are not valuable or will not be corroded by skin oils; this will allow collectors and, just as importantly, the general public, to feel their coveted connection to ancient history and beauty. Mindful of her own analysis in the book, she suggests that archaeologists (admittedly overworked and underfunded already) work harder to form social networks around their work, to replicate the collector social network. I think that these are interesting ideas, especially because they accomplish another goal (expressed by Sarah Parcak in her book): that of democratizing archaeology, and finding more way for laymen to participate in it. This would be good for the intellectual and aesthetic enrichment of the laymen, and good for the popularity and therefore funding of archaeologists.

This book has a lot of interesting information and analyses of collectors throughout history. I’ve been a big fan for a long time of the history of archaeology, as painful as it may be to read of casual looting and destruction; and I will probably look on any Greco-Roman antiquities now with suspicion. I hope to be on the lookout for Professor Thompson's writings on the subject, and on other art crime, again soon.