Excerpt from A Catalogue of the Greek Vases in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

The most valuable part of Col. Leake's collection consisted of black-figured amphorae and hydriae, mostly Attic, and of Attic cylices, both black-figured and red-figured, including those signed by Hischylus and Saconides and by Cachrylion. This part of the collection was evidently bought in Italy, and the provenance in most cases is given as Vulci. To these must be added a collection of lecythi purchased in Athens, large in numbers, but, for the most part, of very little interest or value. All of the vases bought in Italy had sufl'ered severely at the hands of the antiquity-dealer, and had been over-painted until the original surface of the vase was hardly anywhere visible. The result of this process was to give an impression to any student of vases that the collection was in much worse condition, and of far less value and interest, than has proved to be the case. Almost all the vases have now been skilfully cleaned by Mr H. Sharp, of the British Museum. The beauty of their original surface is restored; and it has been found that the opaque coat of paint which in many cases covered the whole vase was, in most cases, not required to hide considerable gaps in the design, but merely served to conceal unimportant frac tures, or to please an inexplicable taste. Unfortunately the restorer was not content with laying on a coat of paint, which could be removed, but also followed the most reprehensible custom of scrap ing out a groove along all lines of fracture, deep enough to hold a filling of new material; these grooves are everywhere only too conspicuous, and have, in many cases, carried away portions of the design.

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