Descriptive Summary
Biographical / Historical Note
Administrative Information
Separated Material
Scope and Content of Collection
Indexing Terms
Descriptive Summary
Title: Halsted B. Vander Poel Campanian collection
Date (inclusive): circa 1570-1997
Number: 2002.M.16
Creator/Collector:
VanderPoel, Halsted B.
Physical Description:
643 Linear Feet
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: The Halsted B. Vander Poel Campanian
collection is an archive devoted to the historiography of archaeological investigations
conducted around the Bay of Naples, with particular emphasis on Pompeii. Comprised of
manuscripts, photographs, maps, plans, drawings and the papers of Matteo Della Corte and
Tatiana Warscher, it is a comprehensive resource for researching the excavations at Pompeii
and the surrounding area.
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Language: Collection material is in English,
Italian, French, German, and Russian.
Biographical / Historical Note
Halsted Billings Vander Poel (variant form VanderPoel) was born in 1911 at the family
estate in New York City. He graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Science degree
in 1935 and then served in the Navy in World War II. After the war, he married, moved to
Washington, D.C. and worked in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.
While still at Yale, Vander Poel developed a strong interest in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century English literature and soon began collecting books and manuscripts.
Vander Poel quickly became established as a serious collector, and broadened his range to
include Old Master paintings, American portraits and English furniture and silver.
In 1956, Vander Poel moved to Rome. There he was involved in various cultural and
educational projects, including the restoration of frescoes in Roman churches, and the
administration of the Keats-Shelley Memorial House at the Spanish Steps. In 1964, he was one
of the founders of St. Stephen's School, an American preparatory school in Rome.
In Rome, Vander Poel met two archaeologists, Matteo Della Corte, a former Director of
Excavations at Pompeii, and Tatiana Warscher, a leading historiographer of the site, and
through them became fascinated with Pompeii. For the next forty years, Vander Poel devoted
considerable time and financial resources to creating an extensive research library and
archive on the archaeological investigations in Pompeii.
In 1997 Vander Poel returned to the United States for health reasons. He died in Washington
D.C. on June 27, 2003.
Administrative Information
Access
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Publication Rights
Preferred Citation
Halsted B. Vander Poel Campanian Collection, circa 1570-1997, The Getty Research Institute,
Los Angeles, Accession no. 2002.M.16
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2002m16
Acquisition Information
The collection was donated by Halsted B. Vander Poel in 2002.
Processing History
Ann Harrison rehoused the collection and created the series arrangement and finding aid in
2006.
Separated Material
Over 1,000 books and individual periodical issues from the collection were separated to the
library. A search using the phrase "VanderPoel" while selecting the index "Provenance" from
the pull-down menu in the Getty online library catalog will retrieve a list of these
separated materials, as well as the Vander Poel collection-level record and records for
books remaining in the archive. Similar searches using "Della Corte" and "Warsher" in the
Provenance index will retrieve books from these scholars' libraries.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Vander Poel Campanian collection is a research archive assembled for the study of the
history of the excavations at Pompeii and to a lesser extent, at Herculaneum and Stabiae. It
represents the culmination of forty years of investigations by Vander Poel. He collected
rare books, prints, photographs, maps and other original documents. He preserved the papers
of Matteo Della Corte and Tatiana Warscher, left to him as bequests upon their deaths. He
sponsored excavations and commissioned mapping and photography of the site. He funded and
led a research team known as the Research in Campanian Archaeology (RICA) Group. His
numerous projects, many still in the planning stages, included the production and
distribution of the
Corpus Topographicum Pompeianum, a
multi-volume work on the history of the excavations at Pompeii; the production of updated
editions of important research texts; and documentation of the Pompeian material in the
Archaeological Museum at Naples.
Until recently, the excavations at Pompeii have been poorly documented and the
documentation that does exist has been dispersed throughout various European depositories
and private collections. Within this documentation, there is conflicting nomenclature and
enumeration of locations. Vander Poel's contribution to scholarship through the creation of
his Campanian collection was the important, if not glamorous, task of collecting this
dispersed information and supervising the creation of tools, ranging from concordances of
house numbers to new maps of the site, which facilitate the study of Pompeii.
This assembling of resources for the study of Pompeii accounts for the extremely broad date
range of the collection. Vander Poel worked on his Campanian projects and collected the
material in the period roughly from 1958 to 1997. The broad date range of the collection,
circa 1570-1997, reflects the dates of the materials, both original works and reproductions,
within it.
The highlights of the Campanian collection include Matteo Della Corte's field notes,
Tatiana Warscher's photographic documentation of Pompeii, the unpublished notes of Vander
Poel's excavations of the Casa di Meleagro, manuscripts of the unpublished portions of the
Corpus Topographicum Pompeianum, and the extensive scholarly
documentation, both textual and visual, of Pompeii assembled by Vander Poel.
Throughout this finding aid, all photographic prints and negatives are black-and-white,
unless indicated as color. The house numbering used in the finding aid follows the current
system of numeration for the site of Pompeii, see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill,
Houses and
Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994),
xix. The journal abbreviations are those standardly used in the field of classical
archaeology. A list of journal abbreviations and full bibliographic citations for works
cited briefly in the finding aid are to be found in Laurentino García y García,
Nova
Bibliotheca Pompeiana: 250 anni di bibliografia archeologica
(Rome: Bardi,
1998).
Arrangement note
The collection is arranged in ten series: ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; .Series I. Matteo Della Corte papers, 1890-1997
Series II. Tatiana Warscher
papers, 1912-1997
Series III. Vander Poel excavations at Pompeii, 1958-1982
Series IV. Corpus Topographicum
Pompeianum production materials, 1776-1996
Series V. New editions of early archaeological
publications on Pompeii, 1796-1989
Series VI. Documentation of objects in the Museo archeologico
nazionale di Napoli, 1960-1971
Series VII. Research in Campanian Archaeology (RICA) research
materials, 1724-1996
Series VIII. Objects in the Campanian collection, 1960-1977
Series IX. Administrative
materials, 1980-1992
Series X.
Non-Campanian material, 1570-1996
Indexing Terms
Subjects - Names
Hase, Friedrich-Wilhelm von
Fiorelli, Giuseppe
Johnston-Lavis, Henry James
Helbig, Wolfgang
Della Corte, Matteo
Pais, Ettore
Petrie, W. M. Flinders (William Matthew Flinders), Sir
Mazois, François
Murray, Margaret Alice
Maiuri, Amedeo
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim
Warsher, Tatiana
Spinazzola, Vittorio
Soprano, Pietro
Scifoni, Guido
Subjects - Topics
Volcanoes Italy
Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli
Mural painting and decoration, Roman -- Italy -- Pompeii (Extinct
city)
Mosaics, Roman -- Italy -- Pompeii (Extinct city)
Inscriptions, Latin
Excavations (Archaeology) -- Italy -- Stabiae (Extinct city)
Excavations (Archaeology) -- Italy -- Herculaneum (Extinct
city)
Excavations (Archaeology) -- Italy -- Pompeii (Extinct city)
Architecture, Roman -- Italy -- Pompeii (Extinct city)
Excavations (Archaeology) -- Italy -- Gravina di Puglia
Region
Architecture, Domestic -- Italy -- Pompeii (Extinct city)
Subjects - Places
Herculaneum (Extinct city)
Gravina di Puglia (Italy)
Pompeii (Extinct city) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Pompeii (Extinct city) -- Bibliography
Pompeii (Extinct city) -- Photographs
Pompeii (Extinct city) -- Discovery and exploration
Vesuvius (Italy)
Stabiae (Extinct city)
Pompeii (Extinct city)
Pompeii (Extinct city) -- Antiquities
Pompeii (Extinct city) -- Aerial photographs
Subjects - Titles
Corpus Topographicum Pompeianum
Genres and Forms of Material
Clippings (information artifacts)
Offprints
Notes
Photocopies
Photobooks
Photographic prints
Photograph albums
Plans (drawings)
Photomosaic maps
Manuscripts for publication
Lantern slides
Medals
Maps
Negatives (photographic)
Microfilms
Notebooks
Newsletters
Watercolors (paintings)
Translations
Typescripts
Postcards
Prints (visual works)
Plans (maps)
Audiotapes
Sculpture (visual work)
Tracings
Proofs (printed matter)
Reprographic copies
Drawings (visual works)
Correspondence
Copy prints
Concordances
Color slides
Certificates
Indexes (reference sources)
Aerial photographs
Address books
Contributors
Helbig, Wolfgang
Johnston-Lavis, Henry James
Gell, William, Sir
García y García, Laurentino
Pais, Ettore
Kelsey, Francis W.
Murray, Margaret Alice
Mazois, François
House, John
Maiuri, Amedeo
Warsher, Tatiana
Barré, Louis
Spinazzola, Vittorio
Barnabei, Felice
Soprano, Pietro
Aldanov, Mark Aleksandrovich
Scifoni, Guido
Hase, Friedrich-Wilhelm von
Falkener, Edward
Fiorelli, Giuseppe
Della Valle, Guido
Della Corte, Matteo
Berberova, Nina Nikolaevna
Zahn, Wilhelm
Piranesi, Giovanni Battista
Rossini, Luigi
Niccolini, Fausto
Niccolini, Felice
Nowotny, Eduard
Onorato, Giovanni Oscar
Mau, August
Minto, Antonio
Korsak, V.
La Porta, Armando
Labruzzi, Carlo
Warscher, Tatiana
Waele, Jos de
Vander Poel, Halsted B.
Van Buren, A.W.
VanderPoel, Halsted B.
Ternite, Wilhelm
Roux, Henri
Rostovtzeff, Michael Ivanovitch
Sommer, Giorgio