Among the earliest published images of papyrus rolls in European books are the researches of the German philologist
Christian Gottlieb Schwarz who published a number of dissertations of different aspects of early books and libraries beginning in 1716. Six of these dissertations that had been previously published separately were collected five years after Schwarz's death, edited by
Johann Christian Leuschner and published in Leipzig as
De ornamentis librorum et varia rei librariae veterum supellectile dissertationum antiquariarum hexas.
Schwarz's images are notable because they were based upon images of details from ancient libraries that he might have found in books or manuscripts, or possibly in ancient sculpture. Schwarz died in 1751 just before the discovery of the excavation of the Villa of the Papyri and the
Herculaneum papyri in 1752. Since the library of the Villa of the Papyri was first Roman library ever found intact with the only intact Roman papyrus rolls, badly charred for being preserved in lava, the actual appearance of papyrus rolls, and how they were maintained in Roman libraries had to be inferred prior the excavation of of the library of the Villa of the Papyri.