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Visitors, Display, and Reception in the Antiquity Collectionsof Late-Renaissance Rome
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Abstract
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.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © 2005 Renaissance Society of America
Footnotes
An inchoate version of this essay was read at the 2002 Meeting of the RSA, in Scottsdale, Arizona. I am grateful to the audience there for comments, and particularly to Kathleen Christian, Tanya Pollard, Guido Rebecchini, and the two RQ readers for their helpful suggestions on the written version. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
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