Cult of beauty - Minerva

Insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo
Buondelmonti of Florence (1420). The
traveller Cyriacus of Ancona arrived
in 1445, but his detailed description
was not available to later visitors, who
had to rely on Callimachus, Strabo and
other classical writers. The Venetians
who controlled Delos until 1566 were
the first to remove some of the works
of art they found there. When the
island passed to Turkish rule it became
more inaccessible to westerners, but
British interest was kindled by chance
in the early 17 th century.
Sir Thomas Roe (1581–1644), British
Ambassador to the Ottoman court in
Constantinople, found his services
required by the two leading enthusiasts
for the new fashion of collecting
antiquities: Thomas Howard, Earl
of Arundel (1585–1646) and George
Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1592–
1628) (Fig 6). Roe wrote to Arundel
in 1622: ‘Concerning antiquities in
Minerva May/June 2011
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marbles, there are many in divers parts,
but especially at Delphos [Delos],
unesteemed here; and, I doubt not,
easy to be procured for the charge of
digging and fetching, which must be
purposely undertaken.’ This is the first
reference to the fact that anyone who
visited Delos with a suitable ship could
remove whatever they liked without
opposition from the Turkish authorities
or local Greeks, which usually
impeded collectors seeking to acquire
artefacts on the mainland. It was not
necessarily an easy journey, however,
since hostile encounters with pirates,
Turkish warships or rival collectors
were frequent.
Roe did not travel to Delos himself
but acquired information from
the Greek Orthodox clergy. He wrote
to Arundel in 1624: ‘Besides, he [the
Patriarch] hath told mee of a little
island, the sacred place of the buriall
of all the ancient Greekes, utterly
Greek archaeology
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in the Aegean
Fig 4. The theatre of
Delos. Photo: courtesy
of Elisa Triolo.
Fig 5. Le marché aux
esclaves (The Slave
Market), by Gustave
Clarence Rudolphe,
c. 1882. Oil on canvas.
The scene depicts a
Roman slave market,
similar to that which
flourished on Delos.
Fig 6. The Duke of
Buckingham, by Peter
Paul Rubens, 1625.
George Villiers, 1 st
Duke of Buckingham
(1592–1628) was a
favourite of King
James I. He famously
appears in Alexandre
Dumas’ novel The
Three Musketeers as
a lover of the French
queen.
uninhabited and as yet unsearcht.’ This
is a reference to Rheneia, the adjacent
and larger island where Delians were
buried. Roe wrote somewhat disingenuously
to Buckingham two days later
in exactly the same terms. He evidently
interested the two men, since by 1628
both Arundel and Buckingham had
received consignments of antiquities
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