Saints and Salvation: The Wilshere CollectionSusan Walker
Saints and Salvation: The Wilshere CollectionSusan Walker
Susan Walker
ISBN:9781854442901
Publisher:Ashmolean Museum
Size:8.75 in x 11 in
Pages 240
Illustrations:120 color, 10 b&w
Paperback
• New insights into early Christian archeology and art.
.Previously unpublished material from the Vatican Library, covering Jewish, pagan and Christian history
• Never before published details about Roman gold-glass, covering artifacts relating to Jewish and Christian history in Rome.
There are exciting facts and history to keep the layperson or the cognoscenti enthralled. You don't have to be a religious scholar to delve into this book. Here is newly-discovered documentation, including correspondence held at the Vatican Library and the Biblioteca San Luigi, Posilippo. This is the story also of a single collector's passion, that of Charles Wilshire (1814-1906), who acquired and shipped home for protection this remarkable collection. Wilshire, a wealthy landowner, traveled often to Italy and became fascinated with the early church. He saw as his mission to acquaint the British with the then-brand-new -- subject of early Christian archeology and art. He brought back Christian, Jewish and pagan gold-glass, sarcophagi and inscriptions. Previously unpublished evidence offers intriguing information about the pieces as well as recent scientific analysis of the objects, now housed in the Ashmolean Museum. The gold-glass is of special interest as we learn of its use in fourth-century Rome.
Contents: Introduction; The History of the Collection and its Collector; The sources of the Charles Wilshere Collection; Honoring the Dead in Late Antique Rome; Materials and Techniques; Iconography; Indices.
Dr Susan Walker is President of the Society for Libyan Studies, Honorary Curator (formerly Sackler Keeper) of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum and Emerita Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford.