Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Fellows und Mitarbeitende des ZI sowie Gastwissenschaftlerinnen und Gastwissenschaftler berichten über laufende Arbeiten. Die offene Form des Workshops ermöglicht eine intensive Diskussion.

This workshop presentation will focus on the second chapter of my book project, Art, Eros, and the British Enlightenment. Centered on the wealthy, London-based collector Charles Townley (1737–1805), I will explore how the interpretation of classical and South Asian antiquities that formed the basis of his private collection involved a host of collaborators. Leveraging unpublished correspondence and drawings now held in the Townley Archive at the British Museum, I reconstruct Townley’s working relationships with the itinerant rogue turned scholar, the Baron d’Hancarville (1719–1805), the Scottish draughtsman John Brown (1752–1787), the painter Johann Zoffany (1733–1810), the East India Company Collector James Forbes (1749–1819), and the East India Company Major-General Claude Martin (1735–1800). However, insofar as I show that Townley facilitated knowledge work across geographical and class boundaries, I likewise consider the ways in which he used his museum to demarcate new divisions. Through formal analysis and critical contextualisation of the manuscript “Parlour Catalogues” that he produced for his guests, I argue that his museum modelled the hierarchical dissemination of knowledge characteristic of an ancient mystery cult. This double doctrine allowed Townley to define and cater to different audiences. Upholding convention in a public sphere of his own making, the parlour catalogues enabled a “modern cult of Priapus” to flourish in cloistered, elite privacy.

[Caption: Peacock Mirror. In Jakob Mennel, Fürstliche Chronik, 1518. Vol. 4, ÖNB Cod. 3075, fol. 57r. Illumination on paper. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photo Credit: ÖNB]