18/09/2025 Art History
Collecting can be considered as an art and it’s very difficult to give e definition for it.
We can easily say that the act of collecting can be compared to a science. Every branch of science, in fact, has its own rules and laws to follow. But at the same time, collectors follow their own taste and cannot collect everything.
And yet, on the other hand, collecting is such a personal activity that it becomes difficult to consider it as a “science.” Science, after all, is something objective, while a collection always reveals something about the collector. A passionate collector of Beatles memorabilia, for example, will have a different character and temperament than, let’s say, a collector of Baroque art or rare stamps.
Collecting has often intersected with politics. A well-known example is the Napoleonic campaigns at the end of the 18th century, when artworks and treasures from countries such as Italy, Spain, and Belgium were transferred to enrich the Louvre’s collection, helping establish Paris as a leading capital of art.
But if we set aside this kind of collecting, we realize how true the previous statement is: collecting is a personal art and, in some ways, even an intimate one, because it reveals something about the collector themselves.
Let us consider, for example, the great collectors of the 20th century. We begin with siblings Gertrude and Leo Stein, who, having moved from America to Paris, started collecting artworks by contemporary artists. Leo and Gertrude were among the first to recognize the value of artists such as Matisse, Braque, and Picasso. Gertrude, in particular, transformed her salon into a cultural laboratory. The discussions that took place there would go on to shape the avant-garde movement. The Steins fully embraced their time, and their collection can be seen as a tool of cultural militancy—a bold stand in favour of the new and the innovative.
Now let us think instead of the great American entrepreneur Jean Paul Getty. In 1974, Getty, who had dedicated his life to collecting ancient art, opened his Villa in Malibu to the public, inspired by the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum. It was conceived not only as a museum but as a cultural manifesto: a space that reproduced the ideal of ancient living he pursued and which hosted thousands of artifacts—marble and bronze sculptures, vases, jewelry, mosaics—capable of offering visitors a wide panorama of the Greco-Roman world.
Getty regarded his collection not as a private luxury, but as an educational mission, intended to embody the everlasting value of classical antiquity. For him, collecting meant safeguarding the legacy of the ancient world and making it accessible to the community through an institution.
The Steins, on the other hand, demonstrated the opposite temperament. Their collection was not born to celebrate the past but to support the contemporary avant-garde, investing in artists like Matisse and Picasso when they were still unknown. For the Steins, collecting was a form of participation in the cultural life of their time.
Jean Paul Getty surely would have shared the thought of the Renaissance writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who, living in exile, wrote to his friend Francesco Vettori a letter in 1513. On that occasion, Machiavelli described his evening habit of retreating to his study to converse with the authors of antiquity:
When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go into my study; and on the threshold, I take off my everyday clothes, which are covered in mud and mire, and I put on regal and curial robes; and dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient courts of ancient men and am welcomed by them kindly, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born; and there I am not ashamed to speak to them, to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they, in their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I feel no boredom, I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I tremble at the thought of death; I become completely part of them.