Yet, to go back to the unjustified and indiscriminating spirit of satirists, both of ancient and more recent times, which tends to consider the collector a maniac or fool, many a Greek and Roman chef-d’œuvre of art has nevertheless been spared to our admiration by the patient persistence and art-loving care of collectors.
It would, indeed, be interesting to follow the passage of some of the most noted specimens of past art. If one could trace the true history of each one of these objects in all its details, it would perhaps give us the history of the collecting passion together with tangible proof of its merits and utility.
It would, indeed, not only be interesting but also instructive to know the vicissitudes of some of the works of art that have come down to us. The few hints existing as to the lineage of owners of some of the most famous pieces of Greek and Roman art, certainly promise interest even though marred at times by the fact that much of the information rests upon the vague authority of tradition, or is strongly doubted by modern criticism.
“We owe, it is more than possible, the Venus of the Hermitage to Cæsar; the well-known ‘Whetter’ has almost certainly been saved to our admiration by Lucullus, just as Cicero may be thanked for the ‘Demosthenes’ and the collecting passion of Sallust has handed down to us the ‘Faun,’ the ‘Hermaphrodite’ and the ‘Vase’ of the Villa Borghese.”
These remarks of a well-known French collector who mainly notes works contained in the Louvre Museum might be extended to many other collections, especially those of Rome, where several of the works of art have old historical records of undisputed character.
From the Renaissance down to our own days the pedigrees of celebrated works of art are not only surer, but present at times a less interrupted line of descent. With such it is not uncommon to find a rare object pass from one collector to another, receiving the same care and consideration as though passing from father to son as a cherished heirloom—and it is, in fact, passing from one to another member of the same family, the family bound by an identical burning passion, that of collecting.
As to the essence of this passion, so often confounded with mania—a mistake calling forth the following comment from a French collector: “... confondre la ‘manie’ avec la curiosité, c’est prendre l’hysterie pour l’amour, ‘la Belle Helenè’ pour l’Iliade”—we should like to quote Gersaint, one of the few men who as art dealer and collector in one, what might be styled private dealer in modern phrase, impersonated the passion, as we have said, in its highest expression among the many collectors of the eighteenth century. It must be understood, of course, that Gersaint, one of these maniacs in, say, La Bruyère’s opinion, was a representative of those passionate collectors who subordinate every other passion of mankind to the one they have made the sole aim of their lives. “... A curieux,” says this unilateral lover but not hobbyist collector, “has the advantage of not falling an easy prey to the many passions so familiar to the human family: the curiosité fills all the empty spaces of his leisure moments. Entertained by his cherished possessions, he has time only for working at the advance of his curiosité, and his cabinet becomes the centre of all his pleasures, and the seat of all his passions.”
The outsider and half-way-insider will agree that this is a trifle too much; but, after all, the great collectors who have left to the museums of their countries fortunes that would have been lost but for their intense passion—treasures of art left by the ignorant to the doom of decay—have all felt, more or less, the burning passion described by Gersaint, in the passage quoted which goes on to assert that a true paradise awaits the perfect collector, who is never bored, and never the prey of spleen.
Without discussing the promises held out by Gersaint, as the perfect collector is, to our knowledge, rare, let us state that our book does not hope to urge any reader on to the perfection that ushers into Gersaint’s bliss, but if the brief glimpse we have given of Collectomania with its pleasures and dangers should convince some really passionate lover of art that collecting has a nobler aim than that of mere pleasure, if we should discourage a Tongilius or Paullus, or if this work should scare some modern Clarinus and do away with a noisy, useless up-to-date Trimalchus, we shall feel that the purpose of the book has been justified to some extent.