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| Mariano Fortuny Antiquaries 1863 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"In all of the relevant discussions of antiquarianism, from Momigliano onward, there is a presumption – either stated or implied – that from sometime in the late eighteenth century, whether dated to Gibbon or Winckelmann, the modern discipline of history begins. . . . If, however, we expand our notion of history beyond the definitions that professional historians accepted and then imposed on others through their writing and institutions, then we can consider the nineteenth century as indeed dominated by history, but it is not a professional history. As the historian of nineteenth-century culture, Stephen Bann showed conclusively long ago, in domains shaped by the imagination – such as literature but also art and museums – history was a powerful force. All of these domains worked through concrete encounters with discrete artifacts. . . . Nietzsche's notion of "longing" is crucial, because Nietzsche seeks, as did Goethe, to find a way beyond, around, or under the self-conscious, rationalizing framework that we use to explain – or explain away – how it is that one particular past or another grasps and takes hold of us. Both Nietzsche and Goethe forcibly try to connect a scholarly interest to a personal, and often unexamined, drive. . . . Antiquarianism, as described by Nietzsche, serves life by connecting a person to the past of his things, and of his place. "The small and limited, the decayed and obsolete receives its dignity and inviolability in that the preserving and revering soul of the antiquarian moves into these things and makes itself at home in the nest it builds there."
– from Peter N. Miller's essay A Tentative Morphology of European Antiquarianism, published in World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives (Getty Research Institute, 2014)
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| Elihu Vedder The Questioner of the Sphinx 1863 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| David Dalhoff Neal Oliver Cromwell of Ely visits Mr John Milton 1883 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Édouard Manet The Little Cavaliers 1861-62 hand-colored etching Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Karl Ludwig Friedrich Becker The Petition to the Doge 1860 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema Tibullus at Dealia's House 1866 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema The Triumph of Titus: AD 71, The Flavians 1885 oil on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
"In this canvas, the artist shows Titus returning to Rome in triumph following his capture of Jerusalem in AD 70. His father, Emperor Vespasian, clad in a white toga, leads the procession. Titus comes next, holding the hand of his daughter Julia, who turns to address her father's younger brother and successor, Domitian. In the background is the Temple of Jupiter Victor. Among the spoils from Jerusalem is a 7-branched candlestick from the temple. Alma-Tadema depicted these events by drawing on classical sources, like the reliefs of the Arch of Titus, and on the latest 19th-century scholarship regarding everyday life in Rome."
– from curator's notes at Walters Art Museum
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema A Roman Emperor: 41 AD 1871 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
"In AD 41 the debauched Roman emperor Caligula was murdered. Gratius, a member of the Praetorian Guard, draws a curtain aside to reveal the terrified Claudius, who is hailed as emperor on the spot. Beneath the herm in the background lie the bodies of Caligula, his wife Caesonia, their young daughter, and a bystander. The blood stains on the herm denote the struggle that has transpired as well as the setting, the Hermaeum, an apartment in the Palace where Claudius had sought refuge."
– from curator's notes at Walters Art Museum
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema Promise of Spring 1890 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry Diana Reposing 1859 oil on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Jean-Léon Gérôme A Roman Slave Market ca. 1884 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Jean-Léon Gérôme Diogenes 1860 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Richard Westall Telemachus landing on the Isle of Calypso 1803 oil on panel Glasgow Museums |
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| William Jacob Baer Cabinet Miniature of a Nymph 1898 watercolor on ivory Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |