In terms of individual artefacts, the Tazza Farnese (Museo Nazionale di Napoli) does not have the wide and popular recognition that the Euphronios Krater or the Portland Vase, for instance, have today. This lack of interest may explain ‘why no story of its adventures has been written, and why this extraordinary object, so prized by its illustrious owners for 2,000 years, has become a historical footnote’ (p. 225). Being concerned more with ‘a sense of wonder and greed’ that the Tazza ‘incited to all those who were able to own it’ (p. 6) and less with a reference to its artistic reception throughout the ages, this volume is a cultural history of a banded curved agate bowl, probably made in the first century b.c. in Ptolemaic Egypt. It presents a wealth of ideas and perspectives for reconstructing the locations the Tazza inhabited, the significance it held and, in line with much ‘circumstantial’ historical information, the characters that gave it meaning. Applied to a variety of socio-cultural and historical contexts, these insights provide a context for a new reading of the story. Amongst these ‘contexts’, reception and biography have already become two of the key constructs in contemporary scholarship.
To publish an authoritative biography of an artefact, starting with its production and looking at its changing functions and meanings up to the present day, is a highly ambitious task. In her introduction, B. sets out the pitfalls of such a task, especially when the missing links ‘both frustrate and spur the imagination’ (p. 6) and, therefore, encouraged B. to propose a number of imaginative scenarios by which the Tazza may have moved from place to place. Although B. does not explain her methodology and the structure of her thinking very clearly, she does include a world map which provides an eloquent visual image of the Tazza's journey; a delight for the demanding reader.
A thorough and insightful introduction discusses the origins of the object, though no relevant documents survive. B. treats the date of manufacture (which has long been debated by scholars), the description of the materials and technique, and there is a short, but well argued, analysis of the debate of the origins of the Tazza's stone (sardonyx). B. also considers the subject matter of the Tazza, the ‘traditional apotropaic image of the Medusa’ on the outside, and a vision of luminescent (Egyptian) gods on the inside. There follow eight chapters in chronological order. In Chapter 2 we learn how the Tazza possibly enthralled Romans and more particularly Julius Caesar and Octavian. Quite speculative but well discussed, B. shows the value placed on such luxury objects (e.g. the Gemma Augustea, an onyx cameo) and how they went on to have an eventful life. In Chapters 3 and 4 the activities and scholarly pursuits of various emperors (e.g. Constantine the Great), and the extent to which they associated themselves – directly or indirectly – with the Tazza, are briefly mentioned. Chapter 3 deciphers the system of values and beliefs that underlay this period's appreciation for and consumption of precious material goods, leading to a deconstruction of the object's original use. For example, in a thorough discussion B. argues persuasively that the hole drilled above the head of Isis and through the left of Medusa's nose indicates a clue to the ‘Christianization’ (p. 63) of the Tazza (through the attachment of a metal foot, the object was converted into a Christian chalice). Timur, the Mongol Warlord, and his heirs are the main subject of Chapter 5. Although the Tazza is hardly mentioned in the first dozen pages, the evidence put forward – carefully and quite descriptively – suggests that it was, indeed, in Timur's possession. The reader, however, would expect a more detailed discussion and better quality image of the first secure historical record of the Tazza, a drawing made by the court calligrapher Muhammad al Khayyam, carefully replicating the object's interior. A contextual analysis of the drawing's presence in a princely album long after Timur's death together with a set of rhetorical but intriguing questions about the intellectual and aesthetic challenge and delight that such drawings can give to their owners, are the concluding remarks of what is, in terms of substantial evidence, the most interesting chapter, so far.
In the remaining chapters, B. chronicles the transition of the Tazza from Alfonso of Aragon to Lorenzo de' Medici. Here we learn a great deal about the relatively novel approaches of the period to ancient imagery and how precious materials were reflections of the taste and virtue of their owners. For instance, Lorenzo's inventory, in which the Tazza is valued at 10,000 florins, more than any other object, is characteristic of the extraordinary monetary value ascribed to an object by the collector himself (Chapter 6). In Chapter 7, B. provides a succinct overview not only of how the Tazza came to be named after Margaret of Parma's second marriage, ‘for it passed into the Farnese family’ (p. 162), but also of William Dugood's reproductions – poorly printed here – of the Tazza. The story of the Tazza Farnese ends with an account of how it became part of the break-up of the Farnese collections after Charles III of Spain was crowned King of the Two Sicilies in 1735 (Chapter 8). Filippo Morghen's and Marchese Scipione Maffei's engravings of the Tazza point out the direction that the reproduction of ancient monuments had already taken in the second half of the eighteenth century, though unfortunately B.'s views on that are less insightful. The book closes with two incidents (1903 & 1925) when the Tazza was endangered. The letters written by the man who nearly destroyed it are an ironic but rather interesting conclusion to this long journey.
As an addition to the scholarship on the Tazza (e.g. E. la Rocca, L'età d'oro di Cleopatra: Indagine sulla Tazza Farnese [1984]; J. Pollini, ‘The Tazza Farnese: Augusto Imperatore “Redeunt Saturnia Regna”’, AJA 96 [1992], 283–300; E.J. Dwyer, ‘The Temporal Allegory of the Tazza Farnese’, AJA 96 [1992], 255–82), this study is of particular importance for the history of collecting. Focussing on a single object, it shows how collectors' interest in the exemplary nature of antiquity overlapped with the pursuit of power, political and intellectual status. B. clearly states that her biographical survey is not without gaps, especially when documentary evidence is absent. Therefore, the suppositions she offers should be viewed from a stylistic and contextual point of view rather than as based on primary (or unpublished) evidence, which in most cases has already been covered by others, though for different purposes. The principal drawback of this approach, however, is that in many cases we tend to lose touch with the object, particularly when the latter is totally absent or hidden behind long accounts (that run through several pages) on issues that are – sometimes – of relatively little interest to the Tazza itself. This ambitious project would have been improved with the addition of better quality images of the Tazza and its reproductions. The structure of the book largely separates an approach to those socio-historical facts that are – directly or indirectly – associated with the Tazza from the ways in which it has been visually interpreted. Thus, a concern with cultural history rather than an art-historical approach may be the reason, for instance, that the reader is partially disconnected from a stylistic description of Morghen's engraving in favour of a brief but informative discussion about the dedication plate of the album (pp. 190–1). This deficiency, however, does not detract from the overall impression of a nicely crafted and thought-provoking book.
A long navigation through more than 2,000 years of history of collecting and exchange of objects is a challenge even for the most proficient scholar. Notwithstanding that, these stories in all their variety can provide fresh insights into how people make things meaningful and why they ascribe value to them. This volume deserves a place in the growing body of literature on the history of collecting and artefact biography and will hopefully encourage further publications. For example, an account of the extent to which ancient art – in the form of a single object – has been received and appropriated through the ages can show the ability of images to re-construct and re-visualise material culture, evaluating the resonance between various artistic practices and methods of interpreting objects from the past.
