Joseph Bergmann

Joseph Bergmann, director of the Imperial and Royal Coin and Antiquity Cabinet in Vienna from 1863 to 1871, proposed the purchase that founded the Vienna collection of Cypriote antiquities¹. Before then the cabinet's only Cypriote purchase was made in 1857 from a Mechitarist father, Dovnik: 24 small limestone sculptures and a clay figure for 80 florins¹.

In a report of 17 November 1869 Bergmann wrote that Professor Karl Friederichs of the Berlin Antiquarium, sent by the Prussian government to buy and dig on Cyprus, had told him that the American consul at Larnaca, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, owned the largest collection of Cypriote antiquities, mostly from some 3,000 tombs opened at Dali. Cesnola had divided it into smaller sets; Friederichs had bought one of about 200 pieces for Berlin, and another of about 100 could be had for 1,000 to 1,200 florins¹. Bergmann argued that Cypriote art was a link between Phoenician and Greek art, and noted that the Louvre gave it three rooms¹.

Franz Joseph I approved the purchase of a selection for 1,000 florins on 19 November 1869. The shipment reached Vienna on 16 February 1870: 155 pieces, among them 87 vases, 10 limestone sculptures, 22 terracotta statuettes and 9 bronzes. It was first shown in the "Cyprian Room" of the Lower Belvedere¹. Bergmann, born on 13 November 1796, died on 29 July 1872².