A COLLECTION OF ANCIENT MARBLE SPECIMENS

The Grand Tour saw many English collectors return home with specimens of Roman and decorative marbles, sometimes cut from columns found in the Tiber, and regularly they were fashioned into fine pietra dura tabletops. Very rarely they were kept as mineralogical collections -- a famous example being the Corsi collection in Oxford. Not only are these collections useful identification guides for scholars, but also they are important survivals since some of the quarries that produced these decorative stones in Antiquity are now lost.

For a full listing of the marble specimens present please contact the department.