Local antiquities, local identities: Art, literature and antiquarianism in Europe, c. 1400-1700

This book brings together essays on the array of local antiquarian practices that developed across Europe in the early modern era. Adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative method, it investigates how individuals, communities and regions invented their own ancient pasts according to concerns they faced in the present.

Throughout the period, a wide range of 'antiquities' - real or fictive, Roman or pre-Roman, misidentified or deliberately forged - emerged in archaeological investigations, new works of art and architecture, collections, history-writing and literature. Taking a novel approach to the revival of the antique, contributions to the volume examine how ruins, inscriptions and literary works were used to provide evidence of a particular idea of local origins, rewrite history or vaunt civic pride. Topics of investigation include municipal antiquities collections in southern Italy and southern France, the antiquarian response to the pagan, Christian and Islamic past on the Iberian Peninsula, and Netherlandish interest in megalithic ruins thought to be traces of a prehistoric race of giants.

This book is the first to explore local concepts of antiquity across Europe in a period that has been defined as a uniform 'Renaissance'. It will be of interest to students and scholars of early modern art history, architectural history, literary studies and history, as well as classics and the reception of antiquity.