The Antiquities of Herculaneum. Translated form the Italian by Thomas Martyn and John Lettice
Publisher Information: London: S. Leacroft, 1773.
[Bayardi, Ottavio Antonio (1694-1764).] The antiquities of Herculaneum; translated from the Italian, by Thomas Martyn [1735-1825] and John Lettice [1737-1832] . . . xi, lxxiii, 236, [2]pp. Engraved frontispiece and 50 plates (2 double-page). London: S. Leacroft, 1773. 313 x 240 mm. Diced calf gilt, rebacked, light edgewear. Minor foxing, toning and offsetting, but very good. 18th-century gift inscription on the front flyleaf.
First Edition in English. Bayardi, a Catholic priest, was brought from Rome to Naples by the Neapolitan prime minister in 1746 to publish the Herculaneum antiquities in the Neapolitan royal collections. After issuing several volumes on his own, Bayardi was appointed in 1755 to the newly formed Reale Accademia Ercolanese di Archeologia (Royal Herculaneum Academy of Archeology), which took over the job of publishing the finds from Herculaneum. Bayardi remained with the Accademia for a year, editing the first volume of the Accademia’s Delle antichità di Ercolano (1757), which describes and illustrates some of the paintings found at Herculaneum. He returned to Rome shortly afterwards.
The original Italian edition of Delle antichità, published in eight volumes between 1757 and 1792, was intended to be the definitive publication of the Herculaneum antiquities; to discourage any competing publications, the Neapolitan government limited its distribution and maintained strict control over its content. The English translators of Volume I mention this restrictive policy in their preface, noting that the Court of the Two Sicilies tried to “stifle” their work, and when that failed, “to order, that the book [i.e., the original 1757 edition of Vol. I] which was not to be commonly purchased before, for fear it might become of small value if it lost its rarity, should be sold at a price greatly below the prime cost, in order, it may be presumed, to supersede the translation, and distress the translators by underselling them” (p. v). Mattusch, “Introduction,” in Winckelmann, Letter and Report on the Discoveries at Herculaneum, pp. 1-61.
Book Id: 42920Price: $3,750.00