Vernon Lee in the Vatican: the uneasy alliance of aestheticism and archaeology.

From the 1800s onward, aesthetic critics attempted to free the study of ancient Greek art from the frameworks of institutional education and professionalized criticism. In this process, aestheticism entered an uneasy alliance with archaeology, a discipline that was likewise challenging traditional modes of classical learning practiced in public schools and the old universities. In "The Child in the Vatican" (1881), Vernon Lee -- writing under the influence of Pater and from a position of cosmopolitan female amateurism -- examines the uses of archaeological science in the study of classical art. Her analysis of the sculptures of the Niobe Group at once relies on the archaeological method and asks readers to doubt scientific approaches to art that dim the sublime power of the art object.