The Musée Antoine Vivenel, famous for its extensive collection of Greek and Italic vases, is home to some 100 Etruscan and Italian works that are largely unknown to the general public and to Etruscologists. They come from an encyclopedic cabinet of antiques and curiosities assembled in Paris in the 19th century by Antoine Vivenel, a wealthy building contractor and philanthropic collector who wanted to found an educational Musée des Études in his home town.
The introduction to this work offers a general overview of Etruscan civilization and the Italic peoples, then traces the history of the collection, some of which belonged to Lucien Bonaparte or Viscount Beugnot, highlighting their journey from the necropolises of Vulci, Chiusi and Bomarzo to the Parisian auctions of the first half of the 19th century, where they were dispersed. The catalog raisonné then examines ceramics (impasto, orientalizing ceramics, bucchero nero, imitations of the red and black figures, black glaze), terracottas (ex-voto, urn-canopic and Clusian sarcophagus), bronze objects (votive and funerary bronzes, ornaments, mirrors, cists, banquet crockery, thymiateria and candelabras), as well as numerous pastiches and fakes represented by the collection's centerpiece, the satyr candelabra. Some objects are exceptional for their technical achievement or rarity, such as Italic ornaments, funerary bronzes (lacunari protome, Hellenistic balsamaire) and a small bronze helmet, a Classical unicum.
This book unveils the archaeological riches of an original and fascinating material culture, that of the Etruscans and the peoples of pre-Roman Italy, yet to be discovered in the display cases and storerooms of many museums in France.

Founded in 1839, the Musée Antoine Vivenel in Compiègne boasts an impressive collection of works of art, both antique and modern, a precious testimony to the taste and generosity of the founder whose name it continues to bear. From Oceania to Japan, via Europe, in all periods and genres, nothing escaped the universal curiosity of this astonishing patron of the arts. However, he favored two periods: Greek Antiquity and the Italian Renaissance, considered to be the cradles of the arts. Even today, this choice enables the Musée de Compiègne to offer its visitors a varied collection of the main ceramics produced in Renaissance and 17th-century Italy, particularly in Urbino. What was missing was a catalog of these brilliant majolica pieces. The present work, written by Éric Blanchegorge, Chief Curator of Heritage, and Céline Lécuyer, aims to make them better known and thus celebrate the memory of Antoine Vivenel and the museum he donated to Compiègne over 170 years ago.

This exploration of Albert Robida's work also reveals his international influence from the end of the 19th century. Japan was certainly a distant land with a rich visual culture that had just opened up to the world under the impetus of Emperor Meiji. Just as this aesthetic richness had swept through the Western world under the name of Japonisme, Albert Robida's work was rapidly and repeatedly translated into Japanese. Today, Miyazaki Hayao, creator of Totoro and Chihiro, pays tribute to him. In Russia, director Serguei Eisenstein also drew inspiration from the anticipatory works of Albert Robida. Seeing Robida's futuristic Paris, with its airships and other flying machines, makes me think of Fritz Lang's equally futuristic vision of Metropolis. But it also appears that Robida was depicting a threatening progress that Fritz Lang and Expressionism had also reconsidered with the First World War...
This book is therefore the best way to discover, if not rediscover, a prolific artist who portrayed a pertinent vision of his contemporaries. He deserves our attention, and his place in Compiègne's history and culture.