Vander Poel (Halsted) Campanian collection, circa 1570-1997

Summary

Title:

Halsted B. Vander Poel Campanian collection

Dates:

circa 1570-1997

Creators:

Helbig, Wolfgang, 1839-1915, Johnston-Lavis, Henry James, Gell, William, Sir, 1777-1836, García y García, Laurentino, Pais, Ettore, 1856-1939, Kelsey, Francis W. (Francis Willey), 1858-1927, Murray, Margaret Alice, Mazois, François, 1783-1826, House, John, Maiuri, Amedeo, 1886-1963, Warsher, Tatiana, Barré, Louis, 1799-1857, Spinazzola, Vittorio, Barnabei, Felice, 1842-1922, Soprano, Pietro, Aldanov, Mark Aleksandrovich, 1886-1957, Scifoni, Guido, Hase, Friedrich-Wilhelm von, Falkener, Edward, 1814-1896, Fiorelli, Giuseppe, 1823-1895, Della Valle, Guido, 1884-, Della Corte, Matteo, Berberova, N. (Nina), Zahn, Wilhelm, 1800-1871, Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 1720-1778, Rossini, Luigi, 1790-1857, Niccolini, Fausto, 1812?-1886, Niccolini, Felice, 1816?-, Nowotny, Eduard, Onorato, Giovanni Oscar, Mau, August, 1840-1909, Minto, Antonio, Korsak, V., La Porta, Armando, Labruzzi, Carlo, approximately 1765-1818, Warsher, Tatiana, Waele, Jos de, Vander Poel, Halsted B., Van Buren, A. W. (Albert William), 1878-1961, Ternite, Wilhelm, 1786-1871, Roux, Henri, active 19th century, Rostovtzeff, Michael Ivanovitch, 1870-1952, and Sommer, Giorgio, 1834-1914

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.

Extent:

643 Linear Feet

Language:

English and Collection material is in English, Italian, French, German, and Russian.

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

Background

Scope and content:

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).

Biographical / historical:

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.

Acquisition information:

The collection was donated by Halsted B. Vander Poel in 2002.

Processing information:

Ann Harrison rehoused the collection and created the series arrangement and finding aid in 2006.

Arrangement:

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.

Physical location:

Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Related resources

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.

Indexed terms

Subjects:

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)
Clippings (information artifacts)
Offprints
Notes
Photocopies
Photobooks
Photographic prints
Photograph albums
Plans (drawings)
Photomosaic maps
Manuscripts for publication
Lantern slides
Medals
Maps
Negatives (Photographs)
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

Names:

Hase, Friedrich-Wilhelm von
Fiorelli, Giuseppe, 1823-1895
Johnston-Lavis, Henry James
Helbig, Wolfgang, 1839-1915
Della Corte, Matteo
Pais, Ettore, 1856-1939
Petrie, W. M. Flinders (William Matthew Flinders), 1853-1942
Mazois, François, 1783-1826
Murray, Margaret Alice
Maiuri, Amedeo, 1886-1963
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 1717-1768
Warsher, Tatiana
Spinazzola, Vittorio
Soprano, Pietro
Scifoni, Guido

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

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:

Ann Harrison.

Date Encoded:

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-05-14 13:45:59 -0700 .

Restrictions:

Open for use by qualified researchers.

Terms of access:

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

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

Location of this collection:

Getty Research Institute, Special Collections

1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100

Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US

Contact:

(310) 440-7390

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