Alessandro Castellani

Alessandro Castellani, born in Rome on 2 February 1823 and dead in Naples on 10 June 1883, headed the Roman goldsmith and antiquities house of his family¹. His name reaches Cypriot archaeology by three routes: a printed opinion on Cypriot gold, sales to museums, and a collection sold after his death.

His 1872 tract Orificeria Italiana dealt with archaic jewellery and amber, and Alessandro Palma di Cesnola's Salaminia cites it for Castellani's inclination to give the finer works to the Phoenicians⁸. Luigi Palma di Cesnola reported in his 1878 book that Castellani took the coiled-snake gold rings from Kourion to be earrings, and pointed to the same shape on Golgoi statues and on coins of Tarentum⁷. In 1876 Cesnola sent Charles Newton a New York Times cutting which, as Marangou quotes it, said that Castellani had sold "his precious collection of antiquities" for 250,000, that the collection was in Philadelphia and bound for Washington; Cesnola called Castellani "his friend"⁶. The index of Marangou's volume glosses the entry as a sale to the British Museum, which the text does not say.

Castellani did sell to the British Museum, between 1865 and 1882, antiquities that were occasionally Cypriot³. In 1878 he bought three Black-on-Red flasks at the Hôtel Drouot sale of the collection of Albert Barre⁴. After his death a special Lyon credit bought a lot at the public sale of his collection in Rome; it entered the Lyon museum on 31 March 1884 and included those three flasks (Lyon E 152-1 to 152-3)⁴. Recke's list of the sources of Berlin's Cypriot antiquities includes "1884 aus Slg. Castellani", without saying which Castellani is meant⁵.