Ancient Vases

Antique Prints of Ancient Vases and Classical Ceramic Art

This category brings together original antique prints depicting ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan vases and ceramic art, produced by European engravers and publishers from the 16th through the 19th century. These works document the great tradition of classical ceramic art through the engraved record that made individual pieces in private and public collections accessible to scholars, artists, designers and collectors who could not study the originals directly, and that shaped the neoclassical movement in European art and design through the visual authority of the antique.

The systematic documentation of ancient vases in printed form began in earnest in the 18th century, when the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii and the growing accessibility of Etruscan and Greek ceramic collections in Italy generated an unprecedented body of material for scholarly and artistic study. Sir William Hamilton’s celebrated publication of his vase collections — issued in two series between 1766 and 1776 and illustrated with engravings by d’Hancarville and others — established the model for the illustrated vase publication that subsequent scholars and collectors emulated and expanded. Hamilton’s collection, eventually acquired by the British Museum, became the foundation for the museum’s unrivalled holding of Greek ceramics and the source for countless subsequent illustrated studies.

The vase paintings that decorated ancient Greek ceramics — depicting mythological scenes, athletic competitions, symposia and the everyday life of the ancient world — provided artists and designers with an inexhaustible source of visual reference. The publications of Millin, Tischbein, Millingen and their contemporaries documented these painted scenes with increasing scholarly precision across the late 18th and early 19th centuries, creating a body of engraved vase illustration that served simultaneously as archaeological record, artistic reference and decorative object.

The influence of ancient vase design on the neoclassical movement was profound and far-reaching. Josiah Wedgwood’s celebrated reproductions of ancient vase forms drew directly on the illustrated publications of Hamilton and his successors, as did the work of architects, designers and craftsmen across Europe who sought in the ancient world models of form and decoration of enduring authority.

Antique prints of ancient vases are collected for their archaeological significance, their connection to the classical tradition, and the engraving quality that characterises the finest illustrated publications of the neoclassical era.