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Herculaneum and Pompeii were frequently on the itinerary of the European elite who undertook a Grand Tour. They relied on guidebooks such as Thomas Nargent’s The Grand Tour (1749) in planning their travels. For the wealthy English, by far the most numerous of Grand Tourists, the route normally included Paris, passage through the Alps, a rest stop in the Northern Italian lake district, sometimes Milan (Leonardo’s Last Supper) and Pisa (leaning tower), then Florence (Renaissance masterpieces such as Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, Michelangelo’s David, Fra Angelico’s frescoes, paintings E\ %RWWLFHOOL DQG RWKHUV LQ WKH 8IÀ]L *DOOHU\ DQFLHQW WUHDVXUHV VXFK DV WKH 0HGLFL

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Greece was considered the cradle of Western civilization, few ventured there, because it formed part of the hostile Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which had annexed it in the seventeenth century.

Photography was not invented until the 1830s, and postcards were not common until the end of the nineteenth century, so drawing and painting were the primary means of recording key monuments and vistas. Because drawing was an essential part of an aristocrat’s education, many Grand Tourists kept sketchbooks—visual diaries of their travels—but these were time-consuming to produce and amateurish in quality.

As a result, artists like Antonio Canaletto (1697–1768) and Giovanni Panini (1691–

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assembled with little regard for their actual locations (Figure 1.10). This souvenir includes the Marcus Aurelius equestrian monument, the lower two tiers of the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Egyptian obelisk located in front of St Peter’s, all of which the purchaser would likely have visited. Architectural fragments litter the foreground, and the people wear classically inspired rather than contemporary dress. This image of a remote time and place served several purposes: documentation, escapism, and

Fresco

True fresco is a painting technique used for the decoration of walls.

Powdered pigments dissolved in water are applied to wet plaster, forming a chemical bond. Fresco paintings are durable and their colors do not fade. Popular in ancient Greece and Rome, fresco painting was revived in Italy in the late fourteenth century and was popular in Italy during the Renaissance.

The Sistine Chapel is painted in this technique.

contemplation. In addition to recording popular tourist destinations in and around Rome, paintings like Panini’s provided visual escape to a distant time and place and encouraged contemplation of the rise and fall of civilizations. Escape to distant times and places became an increasingly popular theme in the nineteenth century.

Male members of the nobility traditionally made a Grand Tour to conclude their studies before settling into adult responsibilities at home. Among them were Marie-Antoinette’s brothers, Josef II (Austrian Emperor 1765–90) and Leopold II (Austrian Emperor 1790–92 (1769, Figure 1.11). Their portrait was painted by Rome’s most sought after Grand Tour portraitist, Pompeo Batoni (1708–87). With portrait prices determined by an artist’s reputation and how much of the body was included (a head or bust being least expensive), this almost full-length portrait would have been relatively costly. Such portraits documented the Grand Tour—perhaps the only foreign trip of a lifetime—and often were presented to the Grand Tourist’s parents or hung in the Tourist’s own home (or palace) as a status symbol. Batoni devised a successful formula for these portraits: famous monuments in the background and symbolic ancient sculptures relevant to the sitter. The brothers stand indoors with a view of St Peter’s. While sitters often chose ancient buildings such as the Colosseum or Pantheon, these young men asserted their status as Roman Catholic rulers by including the Pope’s church. Josef ’s arm rests on the thigh of Roma, a female SHUVRQLÀFDWLRQRI WKHDQFLHQWFLW\ZKRKROGVWKHRUERI SRZHU-RVHI ·VFDVXDOSRVWXUH

suggests that Austria has supplanted Rome as a world power. His dress and central placement in the painting indicated his relative status, as Austria’s monarch. Josef II was an enlightened monarch who abolished serfdom (1781), increased peasant rights, and made elementary schooling compulsory for all boys and girls. He also challenged the authority of the Pope by reducing the number of clergy and monasteries and declaring marriage a civil, rather than religious, institution. Typical of Batoni’s clients, the Austrian brothers selected the monuments they wanted included in their portraits, thus personalizing what was otherwise a formulaic souvenir.

Figure 1.10

Giovanni Panini, Roman Capriccio: The Pantheon and Other Monuments, 1735.

Oil on canvas, 99 × 136 cm (39 × 53½ in). Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Other tourists, particularly artists and writers, had different objectives in visiting Italy. In 1787, the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited his artist friend Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829) in Naples. We know about Goethe’s visit because he kept a journal he later published, Italian Journey (1816), and also because both men were avid correspondents—their letters to friends and colleagues survive in archives and libraries. In a variation on the Grand Tour portrait (Figure 1.12), Tischbein depicted Goethe along the Appian Way—a tourist destination on the outskirts of Rome—surrounded by catacombs, funerary monuments, and views of the countryside. Goethe wore a special costume for his full-length portrait—that of DQDUWLVWZKLFKLGHQWLÀHG*RHWKHDVDQDGPLUHUDQGFRQQRLVVHXURI ,WDOLDQFXOWXUH

His status derived not from noble birth, but from his appreciation of ancient culture and the landscape that nurtured it. On 20 December 1786, Goethe wrote: “I am convinced that my moral sense is undergoing as great a transformation as my aesthetic sense.” Goethe sits on a fragment of an obelisk dating from the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichos II, which the Emperor Augustus had brought to Rome in the 1st century. The low relief fragment beside the writer depicts the recognition of Orestes by his sister Iphigenia, an appropriate subject considering Goethe was then completing his verse-play Iphigenia on Tauris. 6DGO\ *RHWKH QHYHU VDZ WKH ÀQLVKHG

portrait. When Goethe returned to Germany in 1787, Tischbein stayed in Naples. He worked for the British ambassador to Naples, Sir William Hamilton (no relation to Gavin). Stationed in Naples from 1764 to 1800, Hamilton amassed a huge collection

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Sculptural elements projecting from a flat surface.

Figure 1.11

Pompeo Batoni, The Brothers Emperor Joseph II and Emperor Leopold II, 1769. Oil on canvas, 173 × 122 cm (5 ft 8 in × 4 ft).

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

of ancient art. In 1791, the second volume of The Hamilton Collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan Vases ZDVSXEOLVKHGZLWK7LVFKEHLQ·VHQJUDYLQJV³WKHÀUVWDUFKDHRORJLFDO

publication illustrated entirely with outline drawings.