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Maximilien Misson : voyageur ou antiquaire ?

Étienne Wolff (Université Paris Nantaire, UMR 7041 ArScAn)

Ancien élève de l’École Normale supérieure, Étienne Wolff est professeur de langue et littérature latines à l’Université de Paris Nanterre. Ses domaines de spécialité sont, à l’origine, l’Antiquité tardive et le genre de l’épigramme, mais il s’intéresse à de nombreux aspects de la latinité, notamment à la réception de l’Antiquité et aux visions modernes de l’Antiquité.

Maximilien Misson, auteur des Lettres d’Italie, ne se présente pas comme antiquaire, et il part en Italie en tant que précepteur d’un jeune aristocrate britannique. On n’a pas de précision sur les motivations du voyage, ni sur la préparation en amont, mais on s’aperçoit au fil de pages que Misson possède une très solide culture antique. Le voyage n’est pas centré sur la visite ou la recherche de choses antiques et médiévales, il est généraliste. Et de fait de nombreuses pages sont consacrées à des lieux où il n’y a rien d’antique, Venise par exemple. Misson se fixe pour but la représentation de ce qui lui semble mériter l’attention, des singularités architecturales aux mœurs des gens, en passant par les événements extraordinaires, les miracles et les reliques. Cependant, parmi ce qui suscite en particulier son intérêt, on relève notamment les inscriptions antiques ou médiévales ou même modernes, et les cabinets de curiosité. Misson fait donc bien œuvre d’antiquaire. C’est ce semi-paradoxe que nous voudrions étudier ici.

Épigraphie et culture classique dans l’Hercules Prodicius (1587) de Stephanus Vinandus Pighius

Ginette Vagenheim (Université de Rouen-Normandie, ERIAC)

Ginette Vagenheim est enseignante-chercheuse en langue, littérature et culture latines à l’Université de Rouen-Normandie depuis 1995. Elle est titulaire d’une licence en philologie classique de l’Université de Louvain-la-Neuve, d’une maîtrise en philologie des textes médiévaux et humanistes de l’Università Cattolica de Milan et d’un doctorat en histoire et archéologie anciennes de la Scuola Normale Superiore de Pise. Elle est membre honoraire de l’Institut universitaire de France, Life Member de Clare Hall in Cambridge et Fellow the the Harvard University (Villa I Tatti) et de l’ University of Columbia NYC (Italian Academy). Elle est experte ERC (SH5). Elle a publié plus de 150 articles et chapitres de livres dans le domaine des études antiquaires à la Renaissance et dernièrement, avec F. Loffredo, Pirro Ligorio’s worlds (Brill 2019) ; elle prépare le premier « catalogue raisonné » des dessins de Pirro Ligorio.

Douze ans après la mort du Prince Karl Friedrich de Jülich-Kleve-Berg, brutalement survenue à Rome en 1575, l’érudit Stephanus Pighius publie le récit circonstancié du voyage entrepris avec son élève alors âgé de 19 ans, depuis les Pays-Bas jusqu’en Italie, en passant par Vienne, sous le titre de Hercules Prodicius, seu principis iuventutis vita et peregrinatio (1587). Plus qu’une simple « peregrinatio », l’ouvrage se propose de servir de guide au jeune homme sur le chemin de la vertu héroïque selon les préceptes de la double culture classique et chrétienne. À cet égard, les inscriptions anciennes constituent une source particulièrement riche en exempla virtutis mais aussi en renseignements précieux sur les études antiquaires de Pighius et de son siècle.

Portrait de Karl Friedrich de Jülich-Kleve-Berg en Hercule dans l’Hercules Prodicius de Stephanus Vinandus Pighius

Il Patriarca Marco Grimani e le antichità di Palestina, Dacia ed Egitto: presupposti eruditi e valenze politiche nel viaggio antiquario nella Venezia del Rinascimento

Daniele Ferrara, Francesco Trentini (Direzione regionale Musei Veneto)

Daniele Ferrara (1962), già funzionario presso le soprintendenze museali di Venezia e Roma dal 2001 al 2009, poi soprintendente per i beni storici artistici ed etnoantropologici del Molise, dal 2015 è dirigente presso la Direzione regionale Musei Veneto (DRMV). La sua produzione scientifica spazia dal medioevo al contemporaneo e comprende diversi contributi dedicati alla committenza e al collezionismo artistico della famiglia Grimani nonché la co-curatela del volume Domus Grimani. La collezione di sculture classiche a palazzo dopo quattro secoli (Venezia, 2021).
Francesco Trentini (1978) già ricercatore presso la Fondazione “Giorgio Cini” di Venezia dal 2005 al 2011, è consulente scientifico della Direzione Regionale Musei Veneto e cultore della materia presso il Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università “Ca’ Foscari”, Venezia. Studioso attento a questioni d’iconologia analitica e cultura visuale in età moderna, alle politiche culturali della famiglia Grimani ha dedicato in particolare il contributo: Etologia e metafora del mondo nella Sala a fogliami di Palazzo Grimani, in Animali figurati (Venezia 2019).

Presentati di norma come pellegrinaggi motivati da urgenze di coscienza, i viaggi che nel 1531 e nel 1534-36 portarono il Patriarca d’Aquileia Marco Grimani fino al sito dell’antico Pons Traiani in Dacia oltre che al Santo Sepolcro alle Piramidi di Giza, assumono un’ecce- zionale rilevanza per la definizione del ruolo dell’antiquaria nella prassi di viaggio del patrizia- to veneziano d’età moderna. In particolare, gli studi condotti in situ da Grimani con l’ausilio di misurazioni e descrizioni diffuse rivelano una pianificazione accurata che, senza ignorare i resoconti di viaggio medievali e moderni, trova nelle fonti antiche, testuali e iconografiche, un fondamentale motivo ispiratore.

Sulla base di una ricognizione della rete intertestuale sottesa ai resoconti, e attraverso una ricostruzione di network, sarà discusso il tema della contiguità tra antiquaria e potere in età umanistica: una funzione organica a quell’uso ideologico della conoscenza dell’Antico nel processo di affermazione politica che caratterizzò l’ascesa della famiglia Grimani di S. Maria Formosa tra XV e XVI secolo.

Cassas et Lavallée, de Pola à Spalato, 1782-1802

Francis Tassaux (Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Institut Ausonius)

Francis Tassaux est professeur émérite d’archéologie et d’histoire romaine. Depuis 1978, il travaille sur l’Adriatique romaine, et  plus spécialement sur l’Istrie. Il a codirigé la fouille de l’atelier d’amphores à huile de Loron (Croatie) à partir de 1994 et coordonne l’Atlas digitalisé de l’Adriatique antique depuis 2013 (AdriAtlas). Responsable de la série Adriatlas à Ausonius éditions – Bordeaux, il est membre du CISA, Centro internazionale di ricerche storiche e archeologiche sull’Adriatico antico, basé à Macerata.

En 1782, Jean-François Cassas, peintre, graveur et architecte, formé à l’école des Ponts-et-Chaussées, effectue un voyage le long des côtes istriennes et dalmates et en rapporte 63 dessins, pour l’essentiel consacrés aux vestiges romains. Ceux-ci ne sont publiés que vingt ans plus tard par Joseph Lavallée sous le titre Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie rédigé d’après l’Itinéraire de L. F. Cassas, avec vue de plusieurs monuments antiques de Pula et de Split. L’auteur, homme de lettres très actif dans les milieux parisiens, mêle le récit précis du voyage de Cassas à ses propres réflexions historiques et morales, fondées sur une connaissance intime des textes antiques. On a ainsi un couple singulier formé d’un artiste voyageur et d’un homme de cabinet et de salon, le premier confiant au second son carnet de voyage et ses dessins.

Antiquaries and oral sources

William Stenhouse (Yeshiva University, New York)

William Stenhouse teaches history at Yeshiva University in New York. He works on the reception of classical antiquities in the early modern period, and especially at how scholars used Roman inscriptions. His books include the volume Ancient inscriptions in the Catalogue raisonné of Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Paper Museum (2002), and Reading Inscriptions, Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (2005).

This paper will examine how travelling antiquaries gathered information from the inhabitants of the places that they visited. Antiquaries tended to identify ruins or to assess objects by comparing them with what they learned from books. In the sixteenth century, however, as scholars explored the remains of Rome across Europe, they found that their texts provided little or no guidance. These scholars turned to local inhabitants for information about the places they visited, even if those local inhabitants lacked the book learning the antiquaries prized. I will look at examples of how antiquaries viewed and described local people, and at how they included local memories and traditions in their work.

Constructing a Carmelite past and present on Mount Carmel: Giambattista di Sant’Alessio and the “Compendio Istorico … del Carmelo” (1780)

Zur Shalev (University of Haifa)

Zur Shalev (Princeton, history, 2004) teaches early modern European history at the University of Haifa. He specializes in cultural and intellectual history, with particular interest in the tradition of learned travel to the Levant in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since 2016 Shalev co-edits the Mediterranean Historical Review. He is co-founder and past director of the Haifa Center for Mediterranean History.

The paper highlights the activities and writings of Giambattista di Sant’Alessio, an Italian Carmelite who between 1765 and 1774 engaged in the planning and construction of a new monastery for the Discalced Carmelite community on Mount Carmel, Haifa. Giambattista’s published work, the Compendio Istorico dello stato antico e moderno del Carmelo … (1780, and a shorter Latin translation earlier in 1772), provides a history of the Carmelites from its early beginnings, which, according to tradition, went back to the prophet Elijah. The book is a rich source for the study of sacred antiquarianism in action. I discuss Giambattista’s documentation practices, and his imaginative matching of ruins and relics to Carmelite traditions. Overall I aim to demonstrate the liveliness of biblical and sacred antiquarianism in the late 18th century.

“Vestigia antiqua cavernae Sti. Eliae…” Giambattista di Sant’Alessio. Compendium historicum de statu antiquo et moderno sancti montis Carmeli. Augsburg: J. A. Labhart, 1772, p. 65.

L’esprit des ruines et le voyage antiquaire des origines aux Lumières

Alain Schnapp (INHA)

Ancien professeur d’archéologie à Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Alain Schnapp est émérite depuis 2014. Il travaille notamment sur l’histoire de l’archéologie, et a publié en 2020 Une histoire universelle des ruines. Des origines aux Lumières.

L’idée du voyage comme exploration du monde et de soi-même est un élément vital de la construction d’une conscience culturelle. Le voyage induit par définition un changement du rapport entre celui qui l’entreprend et les espaces qu’il explore. L’épopée de Gilgamesh comme l’Odyssée relèvent de ce type d’aventure. À travers la rencontre des hommes et des paysages tout un univers se construit, toute une expérience de la découverte se déploie. D’Orient en Occident, des Empires aux sociétés sans écritures cet exposé tentera de dresser une sorte d’anthropologie du voyage antiquaire.

“Kirker’s studie … a deal of curiosities…”. Storie di oggetti ed eruditi in viaggio. Attorno al Museo Kircheriano

Cristina Ruggero (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), Elena Vaiani (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte)

Cristina Ruggero is a graduated art historian. Her research and publications deal with European networking and collecting in the 17th and 18th centuries, the reception of antiquities in drawings and prints, as well as with early photographic documentation. She was fellow and research assistant at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, New York, visiting professor at the University La Sapienza, Rome, department coordinator of the Ludwigs-Maximilian University in Munich, and primary investigator in a DFG-funded project on the reception of Hadrian’s villa in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Elena Vaiani is a former researcher of the Scuola Normale Superiore, where she has studied since the beginning of her academic training. She graduated in History of archaeology and her PhD was in History of art criticism (supervisors: prof. Salvatore Settis and Paola Barocchi). The main topics of her research are collections of antiquities and antiquarianism in the Modern Age in Europe, and history of archaeology (numismatics, gems, small objects). She has collaborated with the Istituto per gli Studi filosofici (Naples), and with the Royal Collection (Windsor Castle) for two catalogs of the The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo.

Fondato nel 1651 dal gesuita Athanasius Kircher, il museo da cui prende il nome è stato uno dei musei di antichità e scienze più ammirati fino al XIX secolo. Un contributo fondamentale per la fama del museo è stata la pubblicazione del catalogo stilato nel 1709 da Filippo Bonanni, le cui immagini sono state largamente utilizzate da Bernard de Montfaucon per l’Antiquité Expliquée; l’opera del benedettino ha reso nota la raccolta del Collegio Romano a livello europeo. Uno studio specifico ora in corso dedicato alle fasi precoci del Museo e alla identificazione delle opere illustrate da Bonanni, ha permesso di individuare alcuni aspetti della collezione strettamente legati al viaggio. Nonostante la storia recente della collezione possa far pensare ad un museo legato alla storia e alla cultura italiana, di fatto per due secoli la raccolta è stata estremamente ‘dinamica’. La relazione vuole presentare materiale inedito su viaggiatori e sugli artefatti del Museum Kircherianum.

Idolo giapponese, in: Filippo Buonanni, Musaeum Kircherianum…, Romae 1709, tav. 21 [4] (Foto: UB Heidelberg).

François-Roger de Gaignières (1642-1715) et l’Europe en portefeuilles

Anne Ritz-Guilbert (École du Louvre)

Anne Ritz-Guilbert est enseignante-chercheuse à l’École du Louvre et chercheuse associée à l’IRHT-CNRS. Spécialiste de l’enluminure médiévale et de la réception du Moyen Âge aux époques modernes et contemporaines, elle a consacré sa thèse d’habilitation à la collection de François-Roger de Gaignières. Elle dirige depuis 2014 le programme de recherche Collecta dédié à la reconstitution numérique et à l’analyse de la collection Gaignières.

Lorsqu’en 1698, Martin Lister visite le cabinet de François-Roger de Gaignières dans l’hôtel des Guise à Paris, il s’émerveille d’y trouver toute « l’Europe rangée par catégorie ». Si l’on connait Gaignières pour ses voyages dans la France du Nord et les relevés qu’il en a tirés, on mesure encore mal l’ampleur de sa collecte de seconde main sur la France méridionale, l’Europe et les confins du monde connu à l’aube du XVIIIe siècle. Nous nous interrogerons sur ses modes d’acquisition et ses choix. Comment dans son organisation et ses mises en séries au sein des portefeuilles se combinent relevés in situ et estampes acquises ?Comment s’articulent ses propres voyages et ses voyages par procuration ? Comment reconstruit-il un monde qu’il ne connait pas au sein de son cabinet parisien ? Quelle carte mentale fait-il émerger de ses portefeuilles de dessins et d’estampes ?

Fig. 1. Capture d’écran du site Collecta.fr (Archive numérique de la collection Gaignières), Carte montrant les lieux visités par Gaignières (points jaunes) et ceux dont il a acquis des reproductions (points blancs). ©Collecta

Fig. 2. Paris, BnF, Est. Vb-117-Fol (microfilm 61331) : Estampe ayant appartenue à F.-R. de Gaignières représentant une vue du palais du Cheval de bronze à Naples, Antoine Bulifon, 1697. ©BnF

Fig. 3. Paris, BnF, Est. Rés. Ob-36-Fol, f. 62 : Dessin de costume de jeune fille napolitaine, Louis Boudan, vers 1700. ©BnF

Unexpected antiquarians: Venetian diplomatic doctors in search of the past in the eastern Mediterranean and Levant

Valentina Pugliano (Università Ca’ Foscari, Massachusetts Institute of technology)

Valentina Pugliano is Marie Curie Fellowship at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice since January 2024. Previously, she was Lecturer and Research Associate in History and the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT, and a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of Cambridge University and a Junior Research Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge. She is currently working on two books: the first based on her doctorate, completed at Oxford University, on the role of apothecaries and pharmacies in the development of early modern natural history; and a second on the diplomatic medicine of the Venetian Republic in the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, and its intellectual and scientific exchanges with Mamluks and Ottomans, ca. 1400-1730.

The flourishing study of antiquities across early modern Europe benefited from the contribution of a little-known category of travelling actors: medici condotti. These were physicians, surgeons and apothecaries appointed by the Venetian Republic to its gubernatorial and consular bases to ensure the health of its diplomats and merchants across its seaborne empire and its trading colonies in Mamluk and Ottoman lands, notably Syria and Egypt. Between 1350 and 1700, medici condotti were regular fixtures in Crete as well as in the Venetian embassy in Istanbul and its consulates (fondaci) of Alexandria, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, and Tripoli.

While their remit was a medical one, their appointment was quickly repurposed for different ends. Beginning in the fifteenth century, influenced by wider cultural trends across Europe, Italian physicians began to seek the condotta medica in order to travel eastward with Venice’s patronage and pursue their intellectual interests, particularly natural history, the study of Graeco-Roman antiquities, and Arabic medical manuscripts. In the hours they could spare from medical practice, they picked up their notebooks and went exploring the neighbourhoods, shops, fields and monuments of the towns and countryside that hosted them. While a standard appointment lasted two years, in parallel with the Venetian consul’s, many sought re-appointment and a few ended up spending decades abroad, refining their knowledge of the country and its core language, be it Greek, Arabic or Turkish.

Of those condotti who engaged in antiquarian pursuits, a handful were driven by the desire to complete thought-out, large-scale projects. The majority, however, seem to have undertaken lower-intensity, piecemeal work. After all, knowledge gathering was not part of their contractual obligations. Accordingly, the records of their activities vary considerably: some wrote little, while other fully invested in building a network of like-minded correspondents and published lengthy treatises once back in Europe.

While on the surface their efforts may appear different, I argue that the condotti expressed a brand of antiquarianism that needs to be studied on its own terms. The roots of this shared approach originate in the condotta medica itself, whose demands, constraints and advantages defined these physicians’ intellectual experience of the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant and what they could accomplish there.

To make my case, I will focus on two sixteenth-century condotti: Onorio Belli stationed in Candia between 1583 to 1599, and Prospero Alpino stationed in Cairo between 1582 and 1585. I will try to show that the condotti’s antiquarianism was marked by the locality to which their appointment bound them as much as by their medical profession. It was thus often functional and presentist, intended to mine the past for actionable information and usable objects, whether a surgical technology or a recipe that may serve them in their practice going forward; and it frequently intersected other fields of inquiry cognate to medicine, notably the study of medical botany and natural history.