The Grand Tour Eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson’s Opinion “A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having.

The Grand Tour

Eighteenth century

Dr. Johnson’s Opinion

• “A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what is expected a man should see.” (Dr. Johnson)

Eighteenth Century

• The golden age of the Grand Tour; institutionalized..• Italy the site of Europe’s cultural inheritance of antiquity

and the Rinascimento. • The age of neo-classicism. Greco-Roman Ideals

of beauty. Visit of Rome and its ruins. Visits to museum collections.

• Imitation of classical models in architecture (Palladio)

• Contacts with contemporary italian art in the famous galleries (Uffizi) and in the painters’studios

The Grand Tour

• The idea of travel as personal enlightenment first took hold in early eighteenth-century England, and quickly became a cultural necessity as the culmination of every young gentleman’s education.

• The ultimate travel destination was Italy, by way of France and Switzerland, with the classical landscape and art of Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice as the crowning cultural experience of what became known as “The Grand Tour.”

FIRST USE OF THE TERM IN LASSELS’ VOYAGE

• The first use of the “Grand Tour” as a phrase appears in one of the earliest of English travel guides, Richard Lassels’ The Voyage of Italy, first published in Paris in 1670.

• Lassels was one of the most important formulators of the Grand Tour and stressed the advantages, away from home, of young lords learning the intellectual, social, ethical, and political realities of the world.

• He talks of “this great booke, the world” and the importance of acquiring those personal attributes required of the true cosmopolitan gentleman.

The Early Grand Tourists: Evelyn

• John Evelyn (1620–1706), in addition to his famous diary and wide achievements, was among the earliest of the “Grand Tourists.” He left Oxford in November of 1643 for London to begin the first of his many trips to Italy and the Continent.

• The route he followed would become the classic path of the Grand Tour: London to Dover; Calais to Paris; then over the Alps to Rome and Venice.

The Early Grand Tourists: Coryat

• Among the earliest of travel was Coryats Crudities, first printed in London in 1611

• It concentrates on the Grand Tourwas the coming of age of young gentlemen in terms of erotic as well as cultural enlightenment

• Coryate further notes: “As for the number of Venetian Courtezans it is very

• great, for it is thought there are … at the least twenty thousand, whereof many are esteemed so loose, that they are said to open thghteenthr quivers to every arrow....”

Evolution of GT in the 18th cent.• Grand Tour becomes a habit and a status symbol for the

wealthy upper middle-classes. Extended to women and . families.

• No longer accompanied by an instructor but by a courier or valet de place (interpreter, cicerone, factotum)

• The concepts of the sublime and the picturesque elaborated in England by Burke and Gilpin respectively lead to the search for natural beauties and the admirantion of landscape which were accessible even for people without a classical education.

• The visit of natural attractions becomes an essentil part of travelliing in Italy (the Alps, Vesuvius, some waterfalls,the Campagna near Rome (nature interspersed with ruins)

• Nature interspersed with ruins an essential element of the picturesque as in many famous paintings (Rosa, Poussin, Claude Lorraine)

The “material” Grand Tour:

Necessities:health certificates (otherwise quarantine)

- passports and safe-conducts in order to cross the borders of the Italian states

- letters of introduction- letters of credit- A courier or valet-de-place.

Practicalities

Means of transportation:- carosse (6 passengers); coche (coach, 16 passengers +

luggage); caleche or calash (2 seats); public coach (pick up and deposit passengers en route)

- small chaises had to be dismantled before passing the Alps- luggage: large amount of boxes (books: see Lady Mary

Wortley Montagu)Where to stay:- inns, taverns (with their “infinite numbers of gnats, bugs,

fleas, and lice, which infest us by night and by day” – S. Sharp)

The Journey

How to get to Italy:

- By sea: from Marseille or Nice, then Genoa, Leghorn (thus continuing to Florence and Tuscany) or Civitavecchia (to proceed to Rome)

- By land: crossing the Alps (N.B. the passage of Mount Cenis), then Turin and Milan

- Sailing rivers: the Po allowed travellers to reach Ferrara and Ravenna, and then proceed to Padua, while sailing the Brenta they could arrive in Venice

The “classical” itinerary (about 3 years long):

- Descend along the Appennines through Florence and Bologna (or reaching Ancona and Loretto), then arrive in Rome, proceed to Naples, finally return to Rome and arrive in Venice for the Carnival

- Tuscany

- Around Rome: Tivoli, Frascati, Albano, Nemi

- Around Naples: Pozzuoli, Pompei, Ercolano, Paestum

- The South (Sicily, Calabria): usually out of the “beaten track”

Italy in the Eighteenth Century: a “patchwork” of states, a “geographical expression”

Some Grand Tour landmarks in details

• FLORENCE : Uffizi

• ROME The focus of the Grand Tour- Could visit the Colosseum by moonlight or torchlight- The presence of the Pope and Holy Week ceremonies.

- VENICE: A world in itself (Doge)- Fascinating decline.- Carnival, gondolas and casinos

• NAPLES- Ruins of Ercolano and Pompeii (discovered in 1731 and 1748. Ascent of

the Vesuvius. Importance of the British envoy Sir william Hamilton and his wife Emma,)

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON(1731-1803)

Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanoes (1773)Campi Phlegraei (1776)

Interest turns to landscape and sublime vistas

Emma Hamilton(1765-1815)

Elisabeth Vigée Le BrunEmma, Lady Hamilton (1790-91)

A Venetian eighteenth-century “casino”

Francesco Guardi, Concerto di Dame al Casino dei Filarmonici (1782)

Next

• See presentation Writers of the Grand Tour

Evolution (Nineteenth Cent.)– 1815-1861: Politicl tourism

• Italy a paradise for radicalssuch as (Byron, and Shelley.– The revolutionary myth, fascination with secret societies,

carbonari and other political utopias I– Many foreign visitors support or take part in Italian wars of

Independence• From the Forties, mass tourism

– . With the introduction of steam, railways, travel (in england and Scotland) becomes faster and more accessible.

– Extension of railways to Europe.– 1842 Thomas Cook introduces organized travel.– Soon Cook’s organizes a mass version of the classical Grand Tour

Nineteenth Century

• Diversification of tourists in Italy. Not only British, Fench and German but also north-Aamericans, Russians and tourists from Eastern Europe.

• Young women alone or with a chaperon. A female initiation rite.

• Towards the end of the century climatic, thermal or healthc tourism . Spending the winter season in the Riviera or on the lakes. Grand Hotesl, casinos (e.g. San Remo).

The attraction of an Italian journey

• Archeologiy and antiquities• Visual and plastic arts.• Music.Especially the opera .• Climate. One visits Italy to find a milder climate– To spend the winter– To be cured of tubercolosis

• For its natural beauties (from second half of Eighteenth century)– Initially the Alps, the lakes, the Campagna– Nineteenth century: the islandd (Capri especially),

Tuscan countryside, the coasts and seaside resorts.