Merlin, A. & Poinssot, L.
Cratères et candelabres de marbre trouvés en mer près de Mahdia.
Tunis, Tournier 1930.
Full Description
Large 8vo. (6) + 143 + (11)pp, 40 photo plates. Publisher’s printed wrappers.
A scholarly and well-illustrated monograph devoted to the marble vases and candelabra which were part of the cargo of an Athenian vessel shipwrecked off the Tunisian coast in the first century B.C. Although fragmentary, the vases carry impressive sculptured reliefs on their sides and are very similar in character to the well-known Borghese vase, found in Rome in the 1560s, and to another long preserved in the Campo Santo at Pisa ; they are thus of considerable relevance to discussion of the dating and art historical importance of such objects generally. The monograph was published as no. IX in a series of “Notes & Documents” issued under the auspices of the Direction des Antiquitès et Arts of the French colonial administration in Tunisia (and is a real credit to the Imprimerie Laporte in Tunis which printed it), but is complete in itself and well worth having as a separate item.