Collectors, Scholars, and Forgers in the Ancient World by Carolyn Higbie (review)

Even early man was a collector of the unusual or decorative. He soon attributed powers to patterns, and the objects, natural or embellished by him, acquired value, eventually monetary value. Collections become valuable, worth stealing, needing protection. The riches of a conquered town, monetary and otherwise, furnish victory processions and eventually private or public places (temples). They can be of valuable material, of decorative value or instructive (books). Cicero was one of the first recorded collectors, of artwork and books, and Higbie ends with Walpole’s obsessive collecting and the formation of public museums. In the Renaissance, skillful copying of ancient objects was a respectable profession (l’Antico and others), and indeed determined the appearance of Western arts in subsequent centuries while true innovation in the arts had to await the twentieth century. If a thing is worth keeping it is worth forging, and forgery starts early, although we may often regard it rather as a tribute to the skills of the original artist—hence the many copies in antiquity of pieces by acknowledged masters, most notably statuary. Nostalgia (I have written a book about ancient nostalgia) plays a major role. We spend a large part of our time progressing while always looking backward; we are all, especially the art historians, also dilettanti. Higbie includes texts as well as objects, and I might hope that any student and many teachers involved in art history or literary history, will take this book—an excellent smallish book about a very big subject—to heart. We should not forget that the passion for collecting is not one exclusive to those concerned with the “classical world” of Greece and Rome. Nor is it entirely absent in the animal kingdom.