Excavations in Herculaneum began in 1738, but by the 1750s no publication of these wondrous finds had yet been produced. Objects and works of art found in Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabia were housed in the royal palace at Portici, where access to the galleries was strictly controlled and visitors were forbidden to either draw or take notes.
The aura of mystery surrounding Campanian antiquities was broken by a group of Frenchmen, led by Abel-François Poisson de Vandières, marquis de Marigny, director general of buildings to Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour’s brother. In his travels through Italy, the marquis de Marigny was accompanied by a number of artists and engravers, including Charles-Nicolas Cochin and Jérôme-Charles Bellicard. Upon exiting the museum at Portici, Cochin and Bellicard drew several of the antiquities they had seen there from memory, and, in 1755, published these drawings in Observations sur les antiquités d’Herculanum avec quelques réflexions sur la peinture & la sculpture des anciens; & une courte description de plusieurs antiquités des environs de Naples. Cochin and Bellicard's book was an immediate sensation throughout Europe. In this same year, Charles VII, King of Naples, established the Academia Ercolanese, a learned society comprised of 15 scholars whose mission was to explicate the ancient monuments unearthed in his kingdom. In 1757, the ercolanesi (as these scholars came to be known) published the first volume of Le Antichità di Ercolano esposte, which focused entirely on wall paintings. Over the next thirty-five years, seven more volumes of Le Antichità di Ercolano would be produced under the sponsorship of the Bourbon monarchs, culminating with a publication on Roman lamps and candelabra in 1792.
Sir William Hamilton served as Britain’s ambassador to the court of Naples from 1764 to 1800. During this time, he became a renowned antiquarian and vulcanologist. His collection of antiquities was considered among the best by his contemporaries and was itself considered a "must-see" by travelers in the Grand Tour. He was a fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries and the Society of Dilettanti. Together with Pierre d’Hancarville, a French pseudo-aristocrat and amateur art dealer, Hamilton published his Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities in four volumes (1766-1767). These were richly illustrated, deluxe books that greatly influenced the emerging taste for neoclassicism. Great part of Hamilton’s collection of antiquities is now in the British Museum.