Thomas Jenkins in Rome

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the trade in antiques in Rome was largely in British hands. Matthew Brettingham the younger was only employed as the agent of Lord Orford, Lord Leicester, and Lord Egremont (Michaelis, Ancient Marbles , 71 sqq. ); but another artist resident in Rome, Gavin Hamilton, served his patrons not merely by purchasing, but by excavating antiques for them in the neighbourhood of Rome; and his enterprise was rewarded by discoveries of great artistic importance, though later archaeologists would have been far more grateful to him had he registered more accurately the sites and circumstances of his researches, still more had he made anything like a plan of the buildings he examined. It has not, it is true, been as yet possible to control his results; for I do not believe that any site which he searched has ever been re-excavated subsequently.