First two volumes of a rare monograph on Etruscan antiquities, written by the Florentine antiquarian Antonio Francesco Gori (1697-1757). In the 1730s, there was an enormous archaeological activity around Tuscany, accompanied by an equally intensive effort to publish books on ancient art. Inspired by the work of Filippo Buonarroti (1661-1733), Gori turned his attention to Etruscan antiquities.
A third volume of the Museum Etruscum accompanies the first two volumes and was published in 1743. It contains 5 dissertations on the subject by a contemporary colleague of Gori (1743), Giovan Battista Passeri (1694-1780).
Gori not only gathered the disseminated accounts and images of ancient Etruscan art objects, he also made them accessible to a public in one publication, to save these antiquities from oblivion. His "conceptual museum" therefore remained a major source for research on ancient Etruria for a very long time and shows Goris pioneering role in the field of Etruscology.
With an owner's inscription on the first free endleaf of the second volume. Binding slightly rubbed, corners bumped. With some small brown stains and a red stain on the boards of both volumes. Some water stains in the last few plates. The first endleaf and the last leaf (pp. 471-472) of the second volume are partly loose. Otherwise a rare edition in good condition. Borroni 12213; Cicognara 2584; Ebert 8701; Hoefer XXI, 295; Pollen 704. Vinet 1672; for the author: Delon, Encyclopedia of Enlightenment I (2001), p. 485.