Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697 – 1768) ‘The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice’, c.1730. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston / Wikipedia Public Domain

Travelling down through the Apennine mountains, Florence finally appeared like a mirage. The Grand Tourist came to Florence with fewer preconceptions, less influenced by Piranesi’s engravings of the monuments of Rome, or Canaletto’s paintings of Venice. The appeal of Florence was less about its buildings or history, and more about art and antiquity. Voltaire had called Florence a ‘second Athens’ and the Grand Tourist came here to marvel at the fine arts assembled under the Medici’s patronage.

At the time of the Grand Tour, the term ‘renaissance’ was not yet in use, however Florence was seen as the cradle of the revival of painting, sculpture and architecture. This revival owed much to Medici patronage during the Middle Ages, drawing Grand Tourists to marvel at the collections. The star attraction was the Uffizi gallery, with its paintings by Titian and Raphael, alongside sculpture from antiquity such as the famed Venus de Medici.

A Fluorspar quartz tabletop made by Pietro Bazzanti who established the ‘Galleria Bazzanti’ at 12 Lungarno Corsini in Florence in 1822 to sell his work to visiting Grand Tourists (Collection Adrian Alan).

Highly sceptical of the scholarly credentials of the average Grand Tourist, Andrew McDougall wrote of his visit to Florence in 1783 that:

‘I by no means pretend to be a connoisseur, either in painting or sculpture, but at the same time, they give me great pleasure; I believe some of my countrymen pretend to receive a great deal more pleasure, than what is real, and wish to have the name of connoisseurs, by praising the noted pictures, but before they begin, they have the good sense, (in general) to enquire the name of the painter.’ (J. Black, The British and the Grand Tour, 1985, p. 221).

 

A Caricature of English gentry on the Grand Tour by Thomas Patch (1720-1782), satirising the attitudes of cultural tourists aspiring to be connoisseurs. © Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Acc No. 61/1935  (Public Domain)

Johann Zoffany (1733-1810) ‘Tribuna of the Uffizi’, c. 1772-78. Commissioned by Queen Charlotte of England in 1772, this visual tour de force encapsulates the cultural and symbolic importance of the Grand Tour phenomenon. (Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024)

The lasting impression of Florence for the Grand Tourist was the sheer scale of Medici family’s vast art acquisitions, immortalizing one family and elevating Florence’s status indefinitely. The Grand Tourist saw that the cultivation of literature, the arts and philosophy was not incompatible with, but stemmed from, the prosperity of commerce, industry and the pursuit of wealth.

A Florentine Pietre Dure and Carved Giltwood Centre Table, The pietre dure by Gaetano Bianchini, The Carved Giltwood Base by Angiolo Barbetti. © Adrian Alan

After having whet their appetites with much marvelling at artistic masterpieces, The Grand Tourists’ sought out souvenirs to show their good taste and commemorate their journeys at home. For example, the third Duke of Beaufort, visiting Italy in the late 1720s, purchased paintings by Raphael, Leonardo, Veronese, Palma Vecchio, Caravaggio, Domenichino, Rosa and Reni. Agents, often ciceroni (guides), such as Parker and Byres in Rome and McSwinny in Venice, assisted in arranging purchases. Lady Pomfret wrote in Rome, 1741:

‘Mr. Parker is a Gentleman who goes about with the English to show them what is most remarkable assisting them also in buying what picture paintings and other curiosities that they fancy most’.

“The Warwick Vase” in an Etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1728), c.1770. The vase was found in fragments at the Emperor Hadrian’s villa in 1770 by Gavin Hamilton, a painter-antiquarian and art dealer in Rome. It was bought by the Earl of Warwick and became internationally celebrated.

The main event of the Grand Tour was Rome. Arriving at the great expanse of the Piazza del Popolo, the Grand Tourist would stand beside the giant obelisk at its centre, in awe of the Twin Santa Maria Churches leading to straight roads lined with imposing palazzi. There were no public spaces even in London that could match such grandeur.

‘The Piazza del Popolo’, engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1728), c.1750 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Public Domain).

Often bewildered by the quantity of monuments on offer, the tourist would again employ an established ‘ciceroni’ as a guide. Beginning with the forum and its temples, a tour of the best-preserved and monumental ruins of Rome would follow; the Arches of Severus, Titus and Constantine; the Trajan and Antonine Columns; the obelisks; the Coliseum; the Baths of Titus, Diocletian and Caracalla; the Capitol with Tullian prison and the Tarpeian Rock; the theatre of Marcellus, and the Pantheon.

‘Grand Antique Chair executed in Parian Marble from the Collection of the Museum of the Vatican’. Travelling to Italy in the 1790s, C.H. Tatham (1771-1842) made drawings of ruins and antiquities which popularised the fashion for all things Graeco-Roman ‘antique’. (‘The Best Examples Of Ancient Ornamental Architecture’, 1799 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Public Domain).

The tourist found busts, statues and vases in the collections of the Vatican and the palazzi of the nobility, but also ventured beyond the city walls to discover antiquities which in the eighteenth century still lay strewn across the encircling farms and wasteland. Then, as now, the appeal of Rome lay as much in imagining what might have been as in the discovery of what remains. Artists of the day, even Piranesi, executed considerable artistic licence to satisfy such imaginings by idealising the vistas of decay.

‘Ruins of the Forum, Looking Towards the Capitol’ by Canaletto, Circa 1740 (Royal Collection RCIN 409047 / Public Domain).

The ensuing vogue for all’antica informed the neoclassical architectural styles which the Grand Tourists exported for their own palaces back home. Just as Andrea Palladio had been influenced by Roman and Greek architecture during the renaissance, the Grand Tourist of the eighteenth century was influenced by classical models and in turn by Palladio’s work, to commission their very own villas ‘La Rotonda’ in the English countryside. British architects such as James “Athenian” Stuart visited Rome, not to polish their gentlemanly manners, but to take measurements and make archaeological discoveries which would inform and enlighten British architecture and design for a generation.

With its columned porticos inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, the Villa La Rotonda by the Italian renaissance architect Andrea Palladio inspired countless Grand Tourists’ to create imitations back home in the English countryside.

Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691–1765), ‘Views of Modern Rome’, c. 1757.  Metropolitan Museum, New York, 52.63.2 (Public Domain).

Rome also offered more modern marvels, notably St. Peter’s basilica, which is filled with many masterpieces of Renaissance and Baroque art, such as the sculpture of Michelangelo and Bernini. In a constant state of restoration and embellishment, throughout the time of the Grand Tour all manner of artisans and artists continued to be employed at the basilica. Many of these craftsmen, such as the mosaicists of the Vatican Mosaic Workshops, and the sculptors of Canova’s studios prospered by also producing works of art as souvenirs for the Grand Tourists.

By the nineteenth century the Grand Tour attracted a more varied audience, women travelled with or without chaperones, and advancements in travel made possible an influx of monied American travellers.

Its is difficult to imagine, but the Grand Tourist might have been a bit disappointed by Italy. They had been raised on stories of mighty and murdered Emperors and wanted to walk in their footsteps. Some had expected to find the buildings still standing in their full magnificence. Their expectations might have been inflated by the distorted and exaggerated art of Canaletto and Piranesi. The reality might not have always lived up to the hype. Returning home, the British Grand Tourist might travel to Vienna, Berlin and Holland before sailing back across the channel. There was ample opportunity to reflect on their travels. Some thought them lacking in adventure, others were robbed, conned and even murdered. They suffered exhaustion, indignity and tedium aplenty. Some found interest in ‘low vices’ and others were more concerned with food and accommodation than with paintings and statues. Many were inspired to become great statesmen, to pursue a life of study, others to build priceless art collections and house them in magnificent palazzos of their own. In a time when most people never strayed further than a few miles from their place of home and work, what is certain is that the Grand Tourist was unimaginably enriched by the experience. Every Grand Tourist came home decidedly older and wiser.

Further Reading

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-was-grand-tour

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grtr/hd_grtr.htm

Mardueño, Melina. “The Grand Tour in Italy.” Piranesi in Rome. Web Exhibit: http://omeka.wellesley.edu/piranesi-rome/exhibits/show/grandtouritaly.

Rosemary Sweet, ‘Cities and the grand tour : the British in Italy, c.1690-1820’, Cambridge, 2012.

Jeremy Black, ‘The British and the Grand Tour’, London, 1985, p. 215.