Arundel marbles
Encyclopedia
Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel
Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel KG, was a prominent English courtier during the reigns of King James I and King Charles I, but he made his name as a Grand Tourist and art collector rather than as a politician. When he died he possessed 700 paintings, along with large collections of sculpture,...
in the early seventeenth century, the first such comprehensive collection of its kind in England. They now belong to the Ashmolean Museum
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
, Oxford University, as a result of a gift made by his grandson Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk
Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk
Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk was the second son of Henry Howard, 22nd Earl of Arundel and Lady Elizabeth Stuart. He succeeded his brother Thomas Howard, 5th Duke of Norfolk after his death in 1677...
in 1667 and of a supplementary gift in 1755, when the extravagant 2nd Earl of Pomfret sold back to his mother those Arundel marbles that had been at Easton Neston
Easton Neston
Easton Neston is a country house near Towcester, Northamptonshire, England, and is part of the Easton Neston Parish. It was designed in the Baroque style by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. Easton Neston is thought to be the only mansion which was solely the work of Hawksmoor...
, and she donated them to the Ashmolean, where sometimes they are called the Pomfret marbles.
The Earl of Arundel had supervised excavations in Rome , and deployed his agents in the Eastern Mediterranean, above all at Istanbul. Late in the seventeenth century, an English visitor to Ottoman Turkey could complain that "the scarcity of antiquities now to be found in Smyrna arises from hence, that it furnished the greatest part of the Marmora Arundeliana." The earl displayed his unrivalled collections at Arundel House
Arundel House
Arundel House was a town-house or palace located between the Strand and the Thames, near St Clement Danes.It was originally the town house of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, during the Middle Ages. In 1539 it was given to William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton...
, London.
Some of these marbles are not works of art but important inscriptions, the first Greek inscriptions that had been seen in England, from which historians have confirmed many dates in Greek history. Among them is the Parian Chronicle
Parian Chronicle
The Parian Marble or Parian Chronicle is a Greek chronological table, covering the years from 1581 BC to 264 BC, inscribed on a stele...
, inscribed about 263 BC so called because it was found on Paros
Paros
Paros is an island of Greece in the central Aegean Sea. One of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos, from which it is separated by a channel about wide. It lies approximately south-east of Piraeus. The Municipality of Paros includes numerous uninhabited offshore islets...
, which gives Greek dates from 1582 BC down to 354 BCE Among outstanding pieces is a metrological relief that shows parts of the human body, outstretched arms, elbow to finger tips, foot, clenched fists and fingers and was used as a standard unit of measure.
The Arundel marbles had been catalogued as early as 1628, when, at the suggestion of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton
Robert Bruce Cotton
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Baronet was an English antiquarian and Member of Parliament, founder of the important Cotton library....
, John Selden
John Selden
John Selden was an English jurist and a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law...
had compiled a catalogue, Marmora Arundeliana, with the assistance of two others, Patrick Young
Patrick Young
Patrick Young was a Scottish scholar and royal librarian to King James VI and I, and King Charles I. He was a noted Biblical and patristic scholar.-Life:...
and Richard James. In 1763 Richard Chandler
Richard Chandler
Richard Chandler was an English antiquary.Chandler was educated at Winchester and at Queen's College, Oxford and Magdalen College, Oxford....
published a fine edition of the inscriptions as Arundelian Marbles, Marmora Oxoniensia with a Latin translation, and a number of suggestions for supplying the lacuna
Lacuna
Lacuna may refer to:* Lacuna , a missing section of text* Lacuna , an extended silence in a piece of music* Lacuna , a lexical gap in a language* Lacuna , the lack of a law or legal source addressing a situation...
e.