Cornelius Vermeule papers

The Cornelius Vermeule papers contain the professional papers of Cornelius Vermeule, a former Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College and Curator of Classical Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where he was regarded as an authority on Greco-Roman art and numismatics. The papers in this collection date from the 1950s, when Vermeule was teaching at Bryn Mawr. They consist primarily of correspondence and manuscripts, both published and unpublished.

The collection is housed in one document box containing 10 folders which are organized by subject.

The first folder contains notes on the holdings in the British Collections. The second contains correspondence from 1953-57, much of which relates to holdings in the British Collections. Folder 3 contains a manuscript titled “Aspects of Victoria on Roman Coins, Gems, and in Monumental Art.” Folder 4 contains three drafts of the manuscript “The Stature of Trajan in the Fogg Art Museum.” Folder 5 consists of correspondence relating to the manuscript in Folder 4. Folder 6 consists of miscellaneous manuscripts, both published and unpublished. These include “Ancient Marbles in Great Britain,” “Cameo and Intaglio Gems from the Sommerville Collection,” and “Classical Numismatics and Archaeology in Middle Eastern Studies,” among others. Folder 7 contains materials for courses that Vermeule taught at the University of Michigan, 1954-55. Folder 8 contains BMC course materials. Folder 9 contains a notebook of handwritten reviews of books dealing with Roman coinage.

Cornelius Vermeule was a highly regarded Greco-Roman scholar and expert numismatist. Although small, this collection highlights his topics of research nicely, especially his work on classical coins. It would be of special value to anyone interested in Roman coins and classical numismatics, in general.