Marketing Nineteenth-Century Italian Sculpture across the Atlantic: Artists, Dealers, and Auctioneers, ca. 1800–1840

By studying two newspaper advertisements for auctions organized in the first two decades of the nineteenth-century, and two auction catalogues printed in the 1830s, this article explores the role of auctions as a means of fostering a market for Italian sculpture in North America in the first decades of the nineteenth century. These sources cast light on the way such auctions were promoted and organized, on the roles of auction organizers, and on the works that were sent to America. Furthermore, this essay investigates the instrumental role of advertisement and catalogue writers in creating the value of the lots to be sold by developing sophisticated rhetorical strategies of description.