News in brief

Spring 2012 Meetings programme

Below are some highlights of the programme. For a full list of lectures please refer to the Meetings Card in this mailing or the website www.sal.org.uk/newsandevents/calendarofweeklymeetings

If you are not a Fellow but wish to attend a lecture, please contact the administrator, Jola Zdunek on admin@sal.org.uk or by calling 020 7479 7080.

Thursday, 2 February

The Roman Legionary Fortress at Caerleon – results of recent research and new discoveries

Caerleon, the base of Legio Secunda Augusta, one of the four legions that invaded Britain in A.D. 43, has been the focus of intensive study since the first antiquarian explorations conducted by John Edward Lee and Octavius Morgan (both Fellows of the Society) in the nineteenth century. Major campaigns of archaeological excavations throughout much of the twentieth century revealed a great deal of information about the fortress, its history and its garrison, and today Caerleon is one of the best known legionary fortresses of the Roman Empire. But this iconic monument is still capable of revealing much that is new and unexpected. This lecture, given by Fellows Peter Guest, Andrew Gardner and Tim Young will present a summary of the results of new research carried out since 2006, including extensive geophysical surveys inside and beyond the fortress walls, a major excavation of the legionary store-building in Priory Field, as well as the discovery of a previously unknown suburb of monumental buildings between the amphitheatre and the River Usk, and the first exploration of these remakable remains in 2011.

Thursday, 16 February

Collector, Dealer, and Forger: the perils of collecting bookbindings and caskets in the 19^th century

Mirjam Foot FSA, a world expert on the history of bookbinding, explores the world of nineteenth-century bibliophiles, seduced by the notion that what they owned was once in the hands of famous figures of the past, especially royalty.  As the best-known antiquarian book dealer in London, Bernard Quaritch, put it (1889): “the same feeling which formerly prompted the veneration for bits of the True Cross, for the relics of saints and martyrs…inspires the modern book-lover with reverence for the volumes,…which are stamped with the emblems of his nobler predecessors.”

Unscrupulous dealers and forgers took advantage of the gullibility of men like the East-India merchant, John Blacker, an obsessive lover of books in fine bindings whose passion for his collections, according to his daughter-in-law, “was like a man’s love for his mistress”.He spent around £80,000 on books and the caskets to hold them which after his death in 1896 turned out to have been fakes. The unravelling of the whole story and the later whereabouts of the forged books, culminating in the discovery of the only casket ever to have come to light, forms the subject of this paper.

Thursday, 8 March

Inigo Jones, the Surveyors of the Works and the ‘Parliament House’

Neither the House of Lords nor the House of Commons figure highly in the canon of works undertaken in the early seventeenth century by Inigo Jones. Closer scrutiny of the works accounts taken together with a series of prints, drawings, medals and enamels yields a far more substantial picture. Architectural historian Alisdair Hawkyard explores how these lost buildings can be reconstructed from a variety of sources. Much is routine, but the picture that emerges reveals a team of architects anxious to resolve problems of design and open to innovation. 

Thursday 1 May

The Societys'14th-century painting of The Dream of the Virgin by Simone dei Crocefissi in the National Gallery: an art historical explanation

This small panel, on loan to the National Gallery since 2006, was given to the Society shortly before his death by Gordon McNeil Rushforth, FSA (1862-1938), first director of the British School at Rome and Council member of the Society of Antiquaries in 1919.  It was identified by Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) as the work of Simone di Filippo Benvenuti, leading figure in Bolognese painting from 1359-1410, known as Simone dei Crocefissi after the four large painted crucifixes he produced. Art historian Jill Franklin FSA examines the densely-layered levels of meaning incorporated in this extraordinary picture, which emerges as a highly innovative pictorial meditation on several conventional strands of Christian iconography, characteristic of the visionary spirituality of its age.