650 LUCE— BRIEF HISTORY OF THE 



results of the investigations that have been carried on in this fasci- 

 nating field. I shall, therefore, in this paper briefly summarize the 

 most important events in this study, and in an appendix at the end 

 will give a list of the museums containing collections of vases. 



The beginning of the study of vases was in the end of the seven- 

 teenth century. In that earliest of treatises on archaeology, Mont- 

 faucon's "L'Antiquite Expliquee" (Paris, 1719), mention is made 

 of them ; and some are published. Previously to this, however, 

 examples had been illustrated in the Museum Romanum of La 

 Chausse, or Caussius, in 1690, and, at about the same time, by 

 Grsevius in his Thesaurus. In these two books we find the first ap- 

 pearance of any reference to the painted vases. 



It may be said that works on vases can be divided into five gen- 

 eral types, all dependent one upon the other, but all equally distinct. 

 In the first place, there are the handbooks and treatises (in which 

 should be included doctoral dissertations) on the history and style 

 of Greek ceramics, and various phases of the subject; secondly, the 

 articles on vases, in archaeological or philological periodicals ; 

 thirdly, catalogues of museums or private collections, and sale cata- 

 logues ; fourthly, albums or portfolios of plates, usually accom- 

 panied with an explanatory text ; and lastly, reports of excavations 

 and acquisitions. Practically all the literature on the subject falls 

 into one of these five heads, while some books combine two or three 

 of them. 



It is the album that started the study of ceramics, and has had 

 the longest life of any of these classes. Usually an album or port- 

 folio is a series of plates taken from vases in different collections. 

 It can, however, consist of plates from one collection alone. It 

 differs then from the catalogue in not attempting to describe or 

 portray the entire collection, as a catalogue would, but only examples 

 selected for their artistic excellence or archaeological importance. 



The ancestor of all modern albums of Greek vases is the monu- 

 mental work of Giovanni Baptista Passeri, called " Picturae Etrus- 

 corum in Vasculis." There are three volumes, the first appearing 

 in 1767, the second in 1770, the third in 1775. This is to this day 

 the approved manner of publishing an album, not all at once, but 

 different parts in different years. Passeri gives the shape of every 



