The earliest date at which public attention was directed to the painted vases was the end of the seventeenth century. In those days, it need hardly be said, systematic excavation was a thing quite unknown, while archaeology as a science was non-existent. Beyond a few sculptures which had been handed down at Rome or elsewhere through many vicissitudes, cabinets of gems which had been preserved by cardinals and other dignitaries who employed them for signet-rings, chiefly for ecclesiastical purposes, and some collections of coins of the Renaissance period, there were no specimens of ancient art preserved. During the seventeenth century, however, the fashion arose of making voyages to Italy or Greece, and bringing back any spoils that might attract the notice of the traveller. In this way the collection of Arundel Marbles at Oxford was made, and the nucleus of many of the famous private collections of England formed. But the painted vases, which for the most part lay buried in tombs, escaped notice almost entirely—and, perhaps even where specimens were preserved, they attracted little notice—until with Winckelmann arose a gradual hankering after the possession of artistic treasures and the formation of collections of antiques. The earliest allusion to be found to painted vases is in the works of La Chausse (Caussius),[12] and in the _Thesaurus_ of Graevius,[13] while the oldest existing catalogue is that of the collection of the Elector of Brandenburg, compiled by L. Beger in 1696–1701.[14] Some few are illustrated in these works, while others were given later by Montfaucon,[15] Dempster,[16] Gori,[17] and Caylus.[18] Winckelmann published several vases in his _Histoire de l’Art_ (1764) and _Monumenti Antichi_ (1769), and the industrious Passeri in 1767–75 published, besides a supplement to Dempster, three volumes containing coloured engravings of vases in various collections. Sir William Hamilton, who was for some time English Ambassador at Naples, formed there a considerable collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, mostly painted vases, which had been discovered in various tombs in Southern Italy and Etruria. All these he brought with him to England and sold to the newly instituted British Museum in 1767. A Frenchman named Hugues or D'Hancarville compiled a magnificent work in four volumes[19] illustrating the vases in this collection, with elaborate diagrams of the shapes; but the representations of the subjects are often marred by the imaginary ornamental borders in which they are framed, while the whole work, like others of the same period, is marked by a tendency to ignore all but the artistic interest, and instead of an accurate reproduction to aim merely at giving a pretty picture.