DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1041#0144
History of the Society of Dilettanti 125-
Gavin Hamilton, Byres, Fagan, and Jenkins the
excavations might have been fruitless or barren, and
without the money of the Dilettanti they might have
been indefinitely postponed. The exertions of the
earlier English excavators, dealers, and collectors had
a further good effect in stimulating native rivalry.
Prelates like Cardinal Albani, popes like Clement
XIV and Pius VI, becoming alive to the value of
the treasures that the foreigner was exporting from
under their very eyes, were aroused to greater energy
in the formation of those marvellous collections
of marbles which are now displayed in the galleries
of Rome. In other countries the leaven of classical
enthusiasm worked more slowly. France, despite the
zeal of an amateur like Caylus and an artist like
Cochin, took little share in the classic revival of the
eighteenth century until after the storms of the Re-
volution. Germany, it is true, produced in the person
of Winckelmann an archaeologist of far greater power
and insight than any of his English contemporaries j
but in historical order the fame and European
influence of Winckelmann follows and does not
precede the efforts of the earlier English Dilettanti.
More important and more vital to the future of Work in
the study than the recovery and export to this Greece and
country of classical remains from Italy, had been the As,aMmw-
work of the Society in exploring, measuring, and
publishing the antiquities of Greece itself and of
Ionia. It is to the credit of the Dilettanti that at
the outset they recognized the true and guiding
principle in classical archaeology, that the numberless
monuments of sculpture, architecture, or painting
which were continually being dug up in Rome,
Naples, or the surrounding districts, were in the .
main but imperfect reflections of the pure light of
Gavin Hamilton, Byres, Fagan, and Jenkins the
excavations might have been fruitless or barren, and
without the money of the Dilettanti they might have
been indefinitely postponed. The exertions of the
earlier English excavators, dealers, and collectors had
a further good effect in stimulating native rivalry.
Prelates like Cardinal Albani, popes like Clement
XIV and Pius VI, becoming alive to the value of
the treasures that the foreigner was exporting from
under their very eyes, were aroused to greater energy
in the formation of those marvellous collections
of marbles which are now displayed in the galleries
of Rome. In other countries the leaven of classical
enthusiasm worked more slowly. France, despite the
zeal of an amateur like Caylus and an artist like
Cochin, took little share in the classic revival of the
eighteenth century until after the storms of the Re-
volution. Germany, it is true, produced in the person
of Winckelmann an archaeologist of far greater power
and insight than any of his English contemporaries j
but in historical order the fame and European
influence of Winckelmann follows and does not
precede the efforts of the earlier English Dilettanti.
More important and more vital to the future of Work in
the study than the recovery and export to this Greece and
country of classical remains from Italy, had been the As,aMmw-
work of the Society in exploring, measuring, and
publishing the antiquities of Greece itself and of
Ionia. It is to the credit of the Dilettanti that at
the outset they recognized the true and guiding
principle in classical archaeology, that the numberless
monuments of sculpture, architecture, or painting
which were continually being dug up in Rome,
Naples, or the surrounding districts, were in the .
main but imperfect reflections of the pure light of