Michał Tyszkiewicz was an outstanding collector
of antiquities and a pioneer of Polish archaeological
excavations in Egypt conducted in late 1861 and early
1862, which yielded a generous donation of 194 Egyptian
antiquities to the Paris Louvre. Today Tyszkiewicz’s name
features engraved on the Rotunda of Apollo among the
major Museum’s donors. Having settled in Rome for good
in 1865, Tyszkiewicz conducted archaeological excavations
there until 1870. He collected ancient intaglios, old coins,
ceramics, silverware, golden jewellery, and sculptures
in bronze and marble. His collection ranked among the
most valuable European ones created in the 2nd half of
the 19th century. Today, its elements are scattered among
over 30 major museums worldwide, e.g. London’s British
Museum, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, New
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston. The latest investigation of M. Tyszkiewicz’s
correspondence to the German scholar Wilhelm Froehner
demonstrated that Tyszkiewicz widely promoted the
development of archaeology and epigraphy; unique pieces
from his collections were presented at conferences at Rome’s
Academia dei Lincei or at the Académie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres in Paris, and published by Italian, French,
Austrian, and German scholars. He was considered an
expert in glyptic, and today’s specialists, in recognition of his
merits, have called a certain group of ancient cylinder seals
the ‘Tyszkiewicz Seals’, an Egyptian statue in black basalt has
been named the ‘Tyszkiewicz Statue’, whereas an unknown
painter of Greek vases from the 5th century BC has been
referred to as the ‘Painter Tyszkiewicz’.
MICHAŁ TYSZKIEWICZ (1828–1897):
AN ILLUSTRIOUS COLLECTOR OF ANTIQUITIES