Grand Tour

The great interest in the visual arts led to the emergence of a genre of figurative production dedicated to Tuscany and the tour of Italy in general. On the one hand there was the “professional” contribution of those who went to Italy with the express purpose of developing their own artistic skills through study of the old masters, but who did not always make their work public. On the other, and this was to have a decisive influence on the history of the idea of Italy, there was the powerful narrative value of the many pictures painted by people who, traveling for the most varied reasons, used the brush in the same way as writers used the pen. The two languages, though obviously different in their expressive and technical characteristics, were considered valid alternatives. Indeed, the image was often regarded as more effective than the word in capturing the different aspects of the scenery and conveying them to the absent or to posterity.

Complementary to the production of these views was their acquisition by “consumers,” fostering the phenomenon of collecting. Becoming a genuine fashion, this was one of the most evident (and lucrative) side effects of the whole custom of the Grand Tour. Among the favorites were the views of Canaletto, Vernet and Claude Lorrain, along with the views of ancient ruins organized into theatrical compositions (“the Roman capricci ”) by Giovanni Panini. Many artists, such as Piranesi, Cavaceppi and Pacetti, also became involved in restoration and acted as go-betweens for the purchase of paintings.

An important phenomenon connected with this last was the dense network of European cultural centers on which the aristocracy and bourgeoisie relied, in the first place the Academy of France in Rome, which accommodated the winners of the Grand Prix awarded by the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Again in Rome, Piranesi's engraving shop attracted numerous British connoisseurs and clients and a series of French pupils. Cardinal Albani's library was frequented by Winckelmann, Mengs, Angelica Kaufmann, Tischbein and Hackert. In the rest of Italy, at Venice, Florence and Naples, His Majesty's consuls (Sir Joseph Smith, Sir Horace Mann and Sir William Hamilton) played a crucial part, introducing British artists into local society and promoting the collection of works by Italian artists in Great Britain.

A revolution had taken place in European landscape painting in the second half of the 17th century with Gaspar van Wittel, the Dutch artist who acted as a link between the Northern and Mediterranean traditions. He broke down the urban setting and, instead of presenting comprehensive views of the city, chose points of view and perspectives that had no precedent. From that time on the view of rural and urban scenery became an extremely popular genre (countless gouaches were bought by Tourists in the markets of Italy, along with engravings and casts of ancient statues) and many were the names that rendered it famous. The most prominent of them, in Tuscany, was Giuseppe Zocchi, whose Scelta di XXIV Vedute delle principali Contrade, Piazze, Chiese e Palazzi della città di Firenze ("Selection of Twenty-Four Views of the Main Quarters, Squares, Churches and Palaces of the City of Florence ," 1744) became an obligatory souvenir for travelers who could not afford to buy a painting. But there were also Bernardo Bellotto (who took his inspiration from Zocchi) and van Wittel himself (who painted many pictures of stretches of the Arno in the environs of Florence, including the famous View of Florence from Pignone in which the panorama of Oltrarno is flanked in the foreground by the «Santa Rosa weir» and the «Vagaloggia watermills» and, on the river, «a swarm of boats and traffic that only a Dutch painter could have illustrated with such nautical accuracy» - De Seta, 1999).

The genre of landscape painting known as vedutismo in Italy was accompanied by a rich tradition of portraiture, serious or caricatural, represented in Florence by the highly sarcastic work of Thomas Patch or by the elegant portraits of Johann Zoffany, who painted the picture entitled Lord Cowper and the Gore Family (1775). Zoffany played a dominant role in the colony of Britons who had settled in Florence, as is apparent from his famous painting The Tribuna of the Uffizi , considered by De Seta (De Seta, 1999) «an icon of the Grand Tour and a celebration of the passion for the arts that set so many foreigners on the road to Italy»: many Englishmen and women in particular, who were to be responsible for setting the seal, in the 19th century, on the hitherto contested dominance of Florence.