Robert J. Del Bonta Collection

The collection primarily contains prints, engravings, and books. The majority of the collection highlights the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to the 20th centuries through the lens of Europeans. It contains depiction of the subcontinent's peoples, cultures, monuments, religious sites, and religious practices as seen in Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian publications. Among this collection are also some representations of people from other parts of the world.

Dr. Robert J. Del Bontà was born in 1949. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1978. From 1993 to 2000 he was a research associate and guest curator at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He also curated major exhibitions for the Berkeley Art Museum; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Portland Art Museum; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He writes and lectures on a wide range of subjects relating to South Asian art including paintings, prints, photographs, popular art, sculptures, and architecture. More recently, he also writes about European prints pertaining to Europe's perception of India and Indo-Portuguese art.

Del Bontà began to collect prints related to South Asia while completing his doctorate in South Asian art history at the University of Michigan in the 1970s. The Robert J. Del Bontà collection contains prints and books depicting people, cultures, religious customs, gods and goddesses, and architecture of Asia, with a specific emphasis on South Asian art.

Del Bontà, Robert John

Underwood & Underwood

Picart, Bernard, 1673-1733

India

Shiva

South Asia

India -- Goa

Calcutta (India)

Sri Lanka

Fakirs -- India

Hinduism

Voyages and travels

Ethnography -- South Asia

Mughal Empire

Religion

Buddhist temples

Cave temples

Mosques

Buddhas

Buddhism

Robert J. Del Bonta Collection

Gift of Robert J. Del Bonta, 2014-2019, 2021

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Prints

Stereographs

Engravings

Robert J. Del Bonta Collection, FSA A2014.06. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The collection is arranged into seven series, beginning with the initial gift in support of the 2014 exhibition, Strange and Wondrous: Prints of India from the Robert J. Del Bontà Collection. Each series represents a grouping selected by the donor and follows the donor's original curation of the material. E or engraving numbers reflect the donor's numbering system.

Series 1: Original gift supporting the exhibition, Strange and Wondrous: Prints of India from the Robert J. Del Bontà Collection in 2014 focusing on ascetics and mendicants.
Series 2: Prints and Engravings relating to the rulers including Timurid and Mughal rulers
Series 3: 16th-17th century prints
Series 4: Engravings and prints from around the world
Series 5: English engravings depicting India
Series 6: Dutch and French engravings of voyages across the world
Series 7: French engravings depicting monuments of India

Permission to reproduce and publish an item from the Archives is coordinated through the National Museum of Asian Art's Rights and Reproductions department. Please contact the Archives in order to initiate this process.

Calendar Prints: Popular Devotional Art of India, slide set No. 52, American Committee for South Asian Art Color Slide Project, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1984.

"Early European Engravings on Indian Themes," CSMVS Research Journal 2016, Saryu Doshi, hon. ed., Bombay: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formally the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India), pp. 72-83.

"Engraving Eastern Discoveries," Treasure Ships: Art in the Age of Spices, James Bennett and Russell Kelty, eds., Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2015, pp. 106-13, 323, and 325-26.

"Engraving India in 17th and 18th-century Europe," Art in Print, Vol. 4, no. 4 (November-December 2014), pp. 22-27.

"From Herodotus onwards: Descriptions of un-identified Jainas," for Jaina Law and Society, published by the Centre of Jaina Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, forthcoming.

"Looking at India, up close and from afar," Treasures, the Members magazine of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Vol. II, No. 2, Fall 1998, pp. 6-8.

"M. Abbayi: Krishna und Yashoda" catalogue entry, Die Sixtinische Madonna: Raffaels Kultbild wird 500, Andreas Henning, ed., Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and München: Prestel, 2012, cat. No. 139, p. 293.

Prints

Stereographs

Engravings

Collection is open for research.