Anniversary Address

Extract

In the famous Order in Council of 4 April 1627, it is laid down that the ‘study of antiquities is by good experience said to be very serviceable and useful to the general good of the State and Commonwealth’, and Charles I commands that Sir Edward Dering, for whose encouragement the Order was promulgated, should have ready access to ‘all or any records rolles registers or bookes within the several offices …’. Documentary record was looked upon as the normal style and medium of archaeology, and while such studies have in no way lost their value, they tend to be more and more illustrated by research into the actual facts and productions of bygone life. Research in the form of excavation is as old as the art of plundering tombs, and in some countries, Egypt for example, only a very meagre fraction of burials has escaped rifling hands. The research of the Renaissance, particularly in Italy, was not over scrupulous in its methods, but was at least passionately concerned in preserving its discoveries. While ancient Rome was being treated as a stone quarry during the second half of the fifteenth century, scholars began to dig with enthusiasm, and gradually exposed the great mass of mutilated sculpture which adorns Rome to-day. But the sole purpose of their search was to extract the object, if possible the big classical object, and Sabba del Castiglione complained that as he could not buy good antiques he was driven to buy sculpture by Donatello.