History of the Barberini Vase, or Portland Vase, in Italy

May 4, 2010
Katharine Garstka

The Portland or Barberini Vase - Marie-Lan Nguyen

This famous cobalt blue and white carved glass vase was probably created in the reign of Augustus Caesar and was exhibited in Italy for almost 200 years.

The earliest account of the Barberini Vase, as it was known for many years, dates from the 1580s, when a local man, Fabrizio Lazzaro, supposedly unearthed it from a mound south of Rome. This description of its discovery is only hearsay, though, and the vase was first mentioned in writing at the end of the 16th century, when it was acquired by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. The Cardinal also collected other works of art, including paintings by Michelangelo, Raphael, da Vinci, and Titian.

The Barberini Vase in Rome

After his death, the Cardinal’s heirs sold the vase in 1627 to the Barberinis, a wealthy and powerful Roman family that included Pope Urban VIII. Scientist and scholar Cassiano dal Pozzo included a drawing of the vase in his Museum Chartaceum (Paper Museum), a 23-volume collection of drawings of various important antiquities.

When Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) died, the vase remained in the possession of Anna Barberini, wife to the Pope’s nephew. It was displayed for many years in the Barberini Palace, where it was frequently shown to visitors. In the late 1600s, a French visitor published details of the vase in a guidebook for travelers, and it thus became a major stop for young men doing the Grand Tour, as well as many others interested in art and antiquities.

From the Barberinis to James Byres, and to Sir William Hamilton

Eventually, about 1780, a Scottish scholar and dealer of antiquities, James Byres, obtained the vase from the Princess of Palestrina, Donna Cornelia Barberini Colonna, who needed money to pay her gambling debts.

Byres commissioned copies of the vase to be made by James Tassie, who had a shop in London where he engraved gems and created beautiful reproductions of gems, cameos, and portrait medallions. Tassie also worked with Josiah Wedgwood to create molds and intaglios for jasperware versions of these items.

Tassie’s Barberini Vase copies did not have contrasting colors for the background and figures, but they did show that there was a crack in the vase and that modifications had been made to the base. (Later restorations have proved that the original vase was a slightly different shape, and was cut down to fit the current base.)

Sir William Hamilton

Although Byres could certainly appreciate the vase, he didn’t have the funds to keep it, and he sold it in 1782 to the diplomat and antiquarian Sir William Hamilton. (He was also noted for his second marriage, to young Emma Lyon, who later became the celebrated mistress of Lord Nelson.) As British Ambassador to the Two Sicilies, Hamilton had ample opportunity to observe and collect Roman art and antiquities.

Hamilton was living in Italy during the excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and he became fascinated with volcanic activity, eventually writing a book about Pompeii. He bought several hundred Greek and Roman vases; he published drawings of many of them in 1767 in his Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Honble. Wm. Hamilton, His Brittannick Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Naples.

The Barberini Vase in England

When Hamilton returned to England, he sold some of his vases to the British Museum, where they were very popular with visitors. Hamilton displayed the Barberini Vase it to the Society of Antiquaries, and then sold it to Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Portland, another collector of antiquities and natural history objects, in 1784.

Sources:

Robin Brooks, The Portland Vase, HarperCollins, 2004.
Nigel Williams, The Breaking and Remaking of the Portland Vase, Trustees of the British Museum, 1989.