In 1981 Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny published Taste and the Antique, a comprehensive study “concerned with the creation, diffusion, and eventual dissolution of a canon of the universally admired antique statues” (p.64). Tracing the history of ancient sculpture from 1500–1900 and documenting 95 ancient statues from their first recorded instance until 1900, the authors drew attention to the influence that these statues had on the modern world and to changes in the public perception and scholarly attitudes towards these works. In 15 chapters, they masterfully charted the factors that led to the rise and fall of the popularity of ancient Roman statuary—the display at the Vatican Belvedere (early 16th c.); Francois I’s admiration (c. 1540); the industry of casts and prints (second half of the 16th c.); the well-visited collections of the Barberini, Borghese, Farnese Ludovisi, and Medici; bronze copies made for Charles I of England (r.1625–1649); the casts Velazquez acquired for Philip IV (c. 1650); the decoration of Versailles for Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715); the growth of Florence as an artistic center under Cosimo III de Medici (1653–1723); the establishment of the Capitoline Museums by Clement XII (1730–1740); the 18th-century excavations in the Bay of Naples (from 1738–1740); the inheritance of the Farnese collection from Isabella Farnese to her son Charles III of Spain (r. 1759–1788); Napoleon’s purchase of the Borghese collection in 1807; the removal to and subsequent return from Paris of select objects between 1796 and 1816; the commercialization of classical sculpture in the 19th century; the growth of stylistic analysis; and the impact of new archaeological finds. Their catalogue of sculptures, arranged in alphabetical order and illustrated with black and white photographs (taken by Penny), grounded the fluid narrative in abundant detail. Now in 2025 with a new social order emerging, the imprint of these sculptures is still ubiquitous, but academic interest has shifted and not only is the general audience unfamiliar with these works, but it is also often suspicious, if not downright hostile, towards them. In such a context, Adriano Aymonino and Eloisa Dodero’s revised and amplified version of this seminal work is much needed.
The new version comes in three large, handsome volumes that appropriately signal the monumental importance of the study and suggest a definitive update after seven reprintings. Volume 1, Text, contains the original chapters and the revised catalogue entries. It also features a short preface by Nicholas Penny and an introductory note by Aymonino and Dodero as well as an updated bibliography. Volume 2, The Originals, contains 546 mainly new color photographs of the objects in the catalogue. Volume 3, Replicas and Adaptations, contains 408 pages of related images, again in color.
Penny (pp. vii–xv) comments interestingly on two points which have arisen since the original publication. He explores the reasons for the inclusion and omission of certain statues, justifying the more unusual choices because it is difficult to find information on them. He also raises the paradox of different values assigned to adaptation, copy, and original, noting that perhaps he and Haskell might have considered how ancient and modern artists faced similar demands. Aymonino and Dodero inform the reader of the key revisions in an “Updated Note on the Presentation of the Essay and Catalogue” (pp. xvi–xvii). The new edition adds bibliography to the narrative chapters and expands the catalogue. The expansion includes a section dedicated to the restoration of each object and traces in greater detail its reception and all names given to it. They stress that the revision paraphrases authoritative archaeological discussions, and that the original text, focusing on dates of discovery, points of exhibition, and nomenclature, was also little concerned with archaeology.
Therein follows the unchanged text and an updated bibliography, which directs the reader with minimal annotation. The ensuing new catalogue entries, comprising well over half of the volume (pp. 142–583) are welcome and admirable. In including many significant details concerning the reception of each sculpture, the authors have drawn on recent scholarship, much of which was inspired by the original volume. On occasion, they even tantalizingly trace reception into the 21st or even late 20th century (the Branko Medenica’s version of the Dying Gladiator in Birmingham, Alabama from 1991, Barry X. Ball’s Hermaphrodite in 2008, Mapplethorpe’s Capitoline Antinous).
Volume 2 presents a glorious collection of color photographs, sometimes with as many as eight pages for each work. James Stevenson and Ken Jackson of Cultural Heritage Digitisation shot all but six of the objects, creating images that arouse new interest and provide an exquisite sense of the surface condition. Occasionally they miss details which make a difference (for example, the puzzling baby held by Commodus as Herakles is barely visible, the three images of the full bust of Brutus are repetitive, the non-frontal image of the carefully remade head of the Younger Balbus compares poorly to that of the Elder Balbus). But, the most disappointing photographs, those of the Curtius mounted on the entrance wall of the Villa Borghese and the single image of the Borghese Dancers in the Louvre, are not by Stevenson and Jackson, thus indirectly affirming the quality of their work.
Volume 3 affords another stimulating collection of images that superbly attests to the diverse reach and artistic importance of the sculpture in the catalogue. The illustrations range from 16th-century prints to Renaissance copies, 18th-century derivations, plaster casts, artistic models, modern posters, ceramics, and gems. This impressive anthology merits high praise and presumably reflects the work of Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings and Rachel Hapoienu who are credited as the image searchers.
For these reasons, the opus does not disappoint and is essential for anyone interested in Western sculpture. Yet, in such a grand production, lapses in editing are puzzling. The readers pause at awkward English sentences, errors in word choice and spellings (“updated note” for a new note about the update, “casts were diffused,” “fingers of the feet”, “Rodian” sculptors, “Telefus”), and skim through repetitive passages (on the Tolentino treaty, Camillo Borghese, Queen Christina of Sweden).
The new editors were also perhaps too deferential to the original to seize opportunities. The editors assume a knowledge of artists, patrons, and historical commentators. Although such a practice made sense in the original volume, contemporaries may no longer recognize these figures. An appendix listing all individuals (for example, Benavides, Baciocchi, Fuseli, Richardson, Romney, Wlenghels), their dates and contributions, would have been an invaluable aid, further enhancing the definitive scope of the work. Another missed opportunity concerns the treatment of the ancient Roman period. Although archaeology is expressly beyond the scope of the work, the text offers a confusing bundle of formulations (originals, copies, replicas, versions) that mix style (classicizing, Hellenistic, classical) and chronology (in centuries BC or AD), oftentimes a carry-over from the original Haskell and Penny entries. Those entries referred repeatedly to Wolfgang Helbig’s comprehensive Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom (first published in 1891 but with a 4th edition between 1963 and 1972) and cited Martin Roberston, the Lincoln Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford from 1961–1978, a colleague of Francis Haskell and author of A History of Greek Art (1975). The new catalogue entries leave such comments unedited and then invariably continue, “more recent opinions…” For example, entry 33 on the Barberini Faun tells the reader: “For Robertson it was no doubt a fine copy or studio replica of a Pergamene bronze of the late third or early second century; or even an original creation of that time in marble. More recent studies confirm Roberston’s opinion and consider the statue as a Greek-Asiatic original of c. 250–200 BC, or of the first half of the second century BC…Others instead consider it the product of a Roman workshop of the end of the Republic, or the second century AD, producing works in the Hellenistic style for a Roman clientele.” (p. 287). A revised edition might summarize past scholarship more concisely (in this case, the sculpture has been dated anywhere from 250 BC–150 AD) and note that recent scholarship tends to concern itself less with dates and more with usage and manufacturing processes. The entry on the dying Seneca reads dizzyingly “a Roman copy of the first or second century A.D. (possibly of the age of Trajan or Hadrian) of a marble or bronze Hellenistic original of the third or second centuries BC, possibly produced in Alexandria Egypt, portraying an old Fisherman. Another recent opinion tentatively considers it a Roman creation, possibly of the time of Augustus, representing a worshipper used as a votive in a nymphaeum on the Esquiline.” (p. 495). The truth is far simpler. The Dying Seneca was a genre statue of a fisherman that the Romans repeated commonly. There are some 20 versions, all difficult to date, of what scholars now call the “Vatican old Fisherman” type (named for the most complete example). The Borghese one, now in the Louvre, stands out for its black marble, but the most exciting of the ancient versions is an attenuated sinewy interpretation from Aphrodisias, which was the subject of new study after its head was excavated in 1989. The two can be viewed side by side as plaster casts at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The new sections on restoration in conjunction with the extensive photographic documentation bring fresh attention to the physical properties of the sculpture. The careful reader may ask further questions. The dimensions rarely merit comment but, for example, the Farnese Flora is 3.44 m high, the Pudicity 2.09 m and the Mattei Ceres 1.065 m, which certainly influenced their dissemination. Since the restorations of the Red Faun and the Furietti Centaurs required colored marbles, one naturally wonders where and how the restorers procured these. The description of the marbles often diligently records a source taken from the latest publication without acknowledging how problematic these are. Thus, the reader finds a range of inconsistent assignations for the various white Mediterranean marbles used in antiquity, from “marble” (without an adjective) to “micro-asiatic marble”, “possibly Greek”, “Asiatic”, “Pentelic”, “Parian”, and in one case even “Carrara or Luni” (two words for the same location). The authors might have more usefully described the color and grain size, confining the controversial provenance designations to footnotes. Finally, the surfaces get little new attention. Because placement outdoors, direct casting, and aggressive cleaning ruin marbles, we are not looking at the same objects as the sixteenth-century viewer.
As a totality, this illustrated edition aspires to a glorious presentation of the history of ancient statuary in Rome between 1500–1900 in a splendid format that can adorn a bookshelf as a magnificent reference tool. Apart from the editorial hiccups, it largely rises to this steep challenge. But it offers more than a monument to scholarship because it leaves the reader asking comparative questions about different eras (as does Penny himself in the preface), reflecting on the fate of this sculpture in the 20th c., and wondering how digital applications will change it in the 21st c.