In 1936, a fascicule in the ongoing series Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum appeared: Great Britain, Fascicule 11, Cambridge, Fascicule 2. Winifred Lamb was the author of this section that contained descriptions and illustrations of objects from the collection of Ricketts and Shannon. At the time the collection was deposited on loan in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Although Shannon was still alive, he could no longer answer questions about the objects, and it must be assumed that the notes on the purchases (which had been passed on to the author through J.D. Beazley) came from Shannon's immediate circle, or perhaps were notes made by Ricketts himself.
The detailed descriptions are much more extensive than those in the catalogue All of Art from 1979 (which contains mostly small black-and-white photographs of the objects) or those in Greek and Roman Art from 1998 (which contains colour illustrations). That latest edition (written by Eleni Vassilika and with photographs by Andrew Morris and Andrew Norman) includes, for example, a description entitled 'A Labour of Theseus' which discusses a red-figure neck amphora (34 by 22.4 cm) from the period 480 to 470 BC.
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Neck-Amphora [Photograph copyright ©Fitzwilliam Museum: Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY-NC-ND] |
The collection website of the museum contains more similar images, which can freely be downloaded (see the website: 'Neck-Amphora'). Vassilika mentions the possible painter of the vase, the so-called Pig Painter. This name is not used in the online description, but corresponds to that in Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, plate X, 2 (p. 58). The description on the website is factual and brief and does not discuss the images on the vase.
Vassilika's description on the other hand is not overly detailed, but highly informative and composed as an exciting narrative about the events depicted on the vase. As we would expect from an academic publication, the description in the CVA is extremely detailed, with an extensive description of the image, but without any context or explanation.
The beginning reads as follows:
Theseus advances to kill Prokrustus with an axe. His sword is slung in a scabbard from his shoulder. Prokrustus, wounded in head and arm-pit, tries to defend himself with a stone and supports himself with his left hand as he sinks down onto a rock. Above hangs Theseus' cloak.
CVA is online, and the black and white images of this vase and others from the Ricketts and Shannon collection can be consulted online: the item has the rather long title: 206466, ATHENIAN, LONDON, RICKETTS-SHANNON, CAMBRIDGE, FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE, FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, GR22.1937. The online CVA gives 35 results for 'Ricketts', while the original 1936 fascicule contains descriptions of over fifty objects; they are probably all there but not all included in the search.
However, the long text in the fascicule has not been included in the online description. For that one has to find the 'Index of Fascicules by City' elsewhere on the website (follow this link), and click on the 'Browse Text' button behind the title of the fascicule. The Ricketts and Shannon fascicule can be consulted here: Cambridge Fascicule 2. The entire website is aimed at scholars and students with considerable stamina, not at casual visitors looking for items from the Ricketts and Shannon collections.
That's fine, of course, but in the meantime, the descriptions on the museum's own website remain somewhat sparse – and I know that projects like this require an insane amount of time and money, but one can always keep dreaming.
