Dominic Ellis Colnaghi

Dominic Ellis Colnaghi (1834-1908), British consul in Cyprus from 1864, helped dig a deposit of terracotta figures near the Larnaca Salt Lake in 1865 and gave the finds to the British Museum⁴. His father was the London art dealer Paul Colnaghi⁵. He published nothing on Cyprus. In the early 1850s he was private secretary and travelling companion to Charles Newton at Mytilene, sometimes acting as vice-consul¹. The London Gazette then shows him vice-consul at Missolonghi, consul in Corsica in November 1862 and consul in Cyprus on 27 May 1864^7,8.

In spring 1865 the Viscount de Maricourt found a mass of terracottas about a mile and a half from Larnaca. Demetrios Pierides wrote on 12 June 1865 that larger excavations had followed under the Viscount and "M. Colnaghi (the present English Consul)", and that most of the figures were seated Aphrodite or Persephone types³. Kiely and Ulbrich say he dug it in collaboration with Maricourt and Pierides². Other pieces were gathered at Larnaca, Dali, Pyrga and Athienou¹. Colnaghi told Newton that he could not go on without financial support, since consuls in post were not allowed to trade².

He left in the summer of 1865, gazetted consul in North Italy; Kiely names Turin^1,9. Newton regretted losing him from Cyprus¹, and Ulbrich and Kiely describe the move as a reward for his services to the Museum². The collection reached the British Museum in 1866 under registration numbers 1866.1-1.1 to 358, and Tatton-Brown notes that most of it probably came from the sanctuary of Artemis Paralia⁴.