(Naples: , 1766-1776).

A BEAUTIFUL AND IMPRESSIVE PLATE FROM A MASTERPIECE OF CLASSIC ART RENDERINGS AND PUBLICATION. Hamilton served as British envoy to the court of Naples where he began collecting Greek vases and other antiquities immediately upon arriving at his post. In 1766 67 he published a volume of engravings of his collection entitled A Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman antiquities from the cabinet of the Honble. Wm. Hamilton. A further three volumes were produced in 1769 76. Josiah Wedgwood the potter and porcelain maker drew great inspiration from the reproductions presented in Hamilton's volumes.
While widely recognized for their beauty, the reproductions from Hamilton's vases have become evidence of the irreconcilable problem of neoclassicism in the Romantic period. Significant changes in the way the vases were engraved over a span of thirty or forty years demonstrate how an immutable collection of objects is subject to radical shifts in representation in response to the social and artistic styles of the time. Item #26519

A single aquatint plate drawn and engraved after the original pieces in the Hamilton collection. The colour aquatint shows a confrontation between two men, one brandishing a sword, with cloak draped over his left arm, the other attempting to ward him off, a stylized tree flanks the illustration. The background is black, the image coloured with shades of tan, terra-cotta and gold. Printed on a single folio sheet measuring approximately 20" x 13", the image approximately 11.5" X 9.5"., Now presented in cream mounting boards 22" x18" behind clear mylar. A very fine plate in an excellent state of preservation.