The German gem-engraver, medallist, and amateur scholar Lorenz Natter
(1705-1763), was so impressed by the size and quality of the collections
of ancient and later engraved gems which he found in Britain that he
proposed the publication of an extraordinarily ambitious catalogue -
Museum Britannicum - which would present engravings and descriptions
of the most important pieces. He made considerable progress to this end,
producing several hundred drawings, but in time he decided to abandon
the near completed project in the light of the apparent lack of interest
shown in Britain. Only one of the intended plates in its final form ever
appeared, in a catalogue which he published separately for Lord
Bessborough's collection. On Natter's death the single copy of his
magnum opus vanished mysteriously, presumed lost forever. All hope of
recovering Natter's unpublished papers seemed vain, and their very
existence had come to be doubted. Yet they were to be found more than
two hundred years after his death, in Spring 1975, when the classical
scholar and renowned expert in gems, Oleg Neverov, chanced upon them at
the bottom of a pile of papers in the archives of the State Hermitage
Museum in St Petersburg. Neverov and his colleague Julia Kagan carried
out the initial research on the Hermitage manuscripts and produced the
first published account of this archival treasure. The present volume
builds upon their earlier work to produce the first comprehensive
publication of Museum Britannicum, offering full discussion in English
and presenting Natter's drawings and comments alongside modern
information on the gems that can be identified and located through fresh
research. This book is the result of a ten-year collaboration between
scholars on the Beazley Archive gems research programme at Oxford's
Classical Art Research Centre and the State Hermitage Museum. It
fulfills Natter's vision for the Museum Britannicum - albeit two and a
half centuries late - to the benefit of art historians, cultural
historians, curators, and gem-lovers of today.
