UPDATED! The Gennadius Library's Clean Monday celebration in New York City will have a change of venue this year to Kellari Taverna and will be held on February 27, 2012. Festivities begin at 6:30 pm. and feature great food for the Lenten season, an auction, music and dancing! Read details here.
Byzantine Art and Archaeology
The Gennadeion’s collection of books on Byzantine art and archaeology includes standard corpora such as Goldstein’s Elfenbeinskulpturen and Grabar’s Sculptures Byzantines, as well as hundreds of monographs and studies on special topics. The Library receives the continuing fascicles of the Reallexicon zur byzantinischen Kunst and Dumbarton Oaks Papers. Scholars frequently consult the Gennadeion for material on the archaeology and monuments of Byzantine Greece, and the Library is especially rich in such documentation, including the periodicals of local societies and associations from all over Greece. The archaeology of ancient Greece was a favorite concern of Joannes Gennadius, the library’s founder, and virtually all the great folio volumes of the 18th century are held by the Library: Stuart and Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, 1762-1816; the Ionian Antiquities of the Society of Dilettanti, 1769-1915; Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, 1764; Richard Worsley’s Museum Worsleyanum . . . with views of places in the Levant, 1794-1803 (this is the author’s inscribed presentation copy to Lord Nelson, who gave it in turn to Lady Hamilton); and the first serious publication copy on Greek vases, Sir William Hamilton’s Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities, Naples, 1766-67, one of the handsomest books ever printed; the four volume set is bound in green morocco stamped with the arms of Louis XV. Of the early 19th century at least three items should be noted: EQ.Visconti’s Iconographie grecque, Paris 1808, three mammoth volumes (60 cm.), the presentation copy to Napoleon, with his imperial arms stamped on the binding; James C. Murphy, The Arabian Antiquities of Spain, London 1813, the author’s own copy including his original drawings, manuscript notes, and extra plates; and the Expedition scientifique de Moree, Paris 1831-38, the complete set, presented by King Louis-Philippe to Sir. Standish Standish. Many of the later books and pamphlets, though less renowned, are often of considerable value, and hard to find elsewhere.