Making use of new and original material based on firsthand sources, this book interrogates the vogue for collecting, discussing, depicting, and putting to political and cultural use Roman antiquities in the French Renaissance. It surveys a range of activity from the labours of collectors and patrons to royal entries, considers attacks on the craze for the antique, and sets literary instances among a much wider spectrum of artistic endeavour. While Renaissance collecting and antiquarianism have certainly been the object of critical scrutiny, this study brings disparate fields into a single...