Visitors, Display, and Reception in the Antiquity Collections of Late-Renaissance Rome*

This essay examines visitors' experiences in the antiquity collections of Rome between 1550 and 1600. It argues that access to private collections was not as casual as has previously been thought, but that, in fact, it is possible to identify changes in the reception of visitors in this period as the city's collections became increasingly public and institutionalized. Particular pressures on ecclesiastical collectors and parallels elsewhere in the development of the display of objects can explain the change at Rome: because of the city's centrality, its collections serve as an important case study for a wider phenomenon, the growth of the museum.