WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 311 



her everyday life are to us memorials of the classic age 

 when the gods of Parnassus walked with men.' 71 She was 

 an even more enthusiastic collector than the Duchess of 

 Urbino, and her magnificent palace in Mantua was filled 

 with the choicest works of Greek and Roman art that were 

 then procurable. 



She has been described as one who secured everything 

 to which she took a fancy. She had but to hear of the 

 discovery of a beautiful antique, a rare work in bronze or 

 marble uncovered by the spade of the excavator, when she 

 forthwith made an effort to procure it for her priceless 

 collection. If that was not possible, she would not rest 

 until she could secure something else even more precious. 

 She aimed at supremacy in everything artistic and intel- 

 lectual, and would be content with nothing short of per- 

 fection. Hence it is that her collection of antiques, like 

 those of her friend, the Duchess of Urbino, is rightly 

 regarded as having been of singular value in preparing 

 the way for the foundation of scientific archaeology a 

 foundation that was laid by the eminent German scholar, 

 Winckelmann, in the eighteenth century by the publication 

 of his masterly work History of the Art of Antiquity. 



The first woman of eminence to take an active part in 

 archosologic excavation was the youngest sister of Napo- 

 leon Bonaparte, "the beautiful, clever and ambitious 

 Caroline." When Joachim Murat became king of Naples, 

 after his brother-in-law, Joseph Bonaparte, had in 1808 

 been transferred to the throne of Spain, his wife, Queen 

 Caroline, gave at once a new impetus to the work of the ex- 

 cavation of Pompeii along the lines planned a few years be- 

 fore by the eminent Neapolitan scholar, Michele Arditi. 

 She exhibited the keenest interest in the work, and the 

 notable discoveries which were made under her inspiring 

 supervision of this important undertaking show how much 



1 The Most Illustrious Ladies of the Renaissance, p. 152, by 

 Christopher Hare, London, 1904. 



