I. Before the Grand Tour: Britons’ Cultural Interest in Italy (1650-1700)

1It was March 3^rd 1665 when Philosophical Transactions, the journal of The Royal Society, first appeared. Its rationale was clearly stated in the title page: “Philosophical Transactions: Giving some Accompt of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many Considerable Parts of the World”. Henry Oldenburg (1618-1677), its founder and editor from 1665 to 1677, particularly stressed the international scope of the journal in the Epistle Dedicatory, and thus travel was immediately connected to science and scholarly pursuits.

2The issues of the years 1665-1700 were rich in Directions for Sea-Men, Bound for Far-Voyages1 and Observations and Experiments to be made by Masters of Ships2: a country “on the move”, as Laura Ambrose defines it3, England “injoyed making Voyages into all Parts of the World”, and needed scientific support from “Eminent” scholars of mathematics and geometry. The pages of most travel accounts were rich in technical description, as well as in “inquiries” about the flora, fauna, and natural phenomena in and out of Europe, yet there was also space for a purely (cross-)cultural interest in “forrain Countries”4.

3Italy played a special role in this context. The country had been a reference point for European experimental scientists since the time of Galileo Galilei and of the Accademia del Cimento (1657-ca. 1675); as for “Philosophical Arts”5, they were still considered as being at the apex of excellence. In fact, although there were several hypercritical pamphlets against Italian populations in Restoration London – the anonymous The Character of Italy: Or, the Italian Anatomiz’d (1660) warned readers about the vices that would encounter in most northern and southern regions6 − the book market proposed a plethora of thick volumes on its art, literature, and science.

4The reception of Italian culture between 1650 and 1700 was pivotal. Representations of the late seventeenth-century values of “Learned education” and “universal Civilitie”7, its main products in verse and prose contributed to reinforce the relations between the two countries, shaped new cultural trends, and laid the basis for learned travel and the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century. This introductory section will show that Italian books influenced both English literary-artistic taste as well as scientific study, and that they contributed to make readers increasingly curious about that specific part of the Continent.

5The main areas of interest for the members of the London intellighentsia had always been literature and linguistics, art and natural philosophy. However, in a period when political debate was raging, and the country was still suffering from the consequences of the Civil War, several Italian masterpieces in the field of political sciences were considered as possible models to follow, and were republished. They dated back to the Renaissance period, and were in translation form. The first one, chronologically speaking, was probably Traiano Boccalini’s I ragguagli di Parnasso: Or, Advertisements from Parnassus in Two Centuries8. Subsequent editions appeared in 1657, 1669, and 1674 and applied the Arcadian fashion to political studies; as for The Works of the Famous Nicholas Machiavel9, Paolo Paruta’s Maximes of State and Government10, and William Sancroft’s Modern Policies, Taken from Machiavel, Borgia, and other choice Authors11, they circulated throughout the Restoration period, particularly from 1663 to 1695, and showed that the practice of reading past historical works to interpret contemporary issues was still common in England12.

6Italy, however, had a glorious linguistic-literary tradition, and Restoration London was determined not to ignore it. For this reason, once again, most publications were translated into English and addressed to a wider readership. Pietro Paravicino’s Choice Proverbs and Dialogues in Italian and English (1660)13, a detailed contrastive analysis of Italian and English, was followed by Battista Guarino’s Il Pastor Fido, The Faithfull Shepherd. A Pastorall (1647)14 and Torquato Tasso’s Aminta, the Famous Pastoral (1660)15: they reinforced the pastoral trend in English poetry and drama, and prepared readers for Classicism in the Enlightenment. A process which started when Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse was republished early in 160716, it demonstrated that the presence of Italian Renaissance tropes in late Stuart culture was very apparent.

7The “Bel Paese’s” art was certainly another key area of interest. The Royalists’ attraction to its paintings and sculptures could be found in the contacts that they had with Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), and in their determination to import Roman Baroque monuments to London in the 1670s17. Yet, there were also specialised manuals and travel accounts. The three volumes which actually made the country irresistible in Britons’ eyes were Richard Lassel’s The Voyage of Italy (1670)18, Giacomo Barri’s The Painters [sic] Voyage of Italy (1679)19, and William Bromley’s Remarks Made in Travels through France and Italy (1693)20. Far from being mere tourist guides, and rich in beautiful illustrations, they mirrored the Royalists’ desires for that area of art and technology.

8Anglo-Italian cultural relations, however, were not only literary or artistic. In fact, when the Royal Society was founded in 1660, its Fellows could rely on a few, high quality scientific publications from Renaissance Italy.

9Natural Magick by John Baptista Porta (1659)21 was the English version of the Neapolitan scientist’s 1558 Magia Naturalis. Although there are no copies of it in the Royal Society’s archives, we can understand why, even in Robert Boyle’s theories22, chemistry and alchemy were so strictly connected: Restoration England was still influenced by Italian natural philosophy, and it was not ready to waive magic and sixteenth-century traditions.

10Of course, there were other treatises by Italian reputed scholars within the English book market in those years, and some of them were even at the centre of the Fellows’ scholarly debates: Francesco Redi’s Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti (1668)23, Agostino Scilla’s La vana speculazione disingannata del senso: lettera risponsiva circa i corpi marini (1670)24, Paolo Boccone’s Icones & Descriptiones Rariorum Plantarum Siciliae, Melitae, Galliae & Italiae (1674)25, Filippo Buonanni’s Ricreatione dell’occhio e della mente nell’osservazion delle chiocciole (1681)26, and Bernardino Ramazzini’s The Abyssinian Philosophy Confuted: Or, Telluris Theoria (1697)27. They were generally in the original, Latin and Italian, and apart from Boccone’s and Ramazzini’s volumes, they were part of the Royal Society’s collections. Popular in elitist circles, they clearly show that the Fellows’ work mostly consisted in acquiring and circulating the latest scientific findings.

11The Society’s cultural interest in Italy coincided with that of England as an active contributor to the Republic of Letters28: its Fellows were members of the large informal network of European scholars, and a continuous collaboration with other learned academies and journals began. Apart from the Accademia della Crusca (1583—), the Accademia dei Lincei (1603—), that of Cimento, of the Apatisti (1635-1783), as well as the Giornale de’ Litterati in Venice, the most reliable sources of information about Italy were their correspondents from Universities and cultural centres both in the north and in the south. The following sub-section will show how they contributed to Philosophical Transactions, and how they raised the readers’ awareness of Italian science and treasures of the past. As argued above, this was a key step in the construction of learned travel and of the Grand Tour of Italy in the Enlightenment.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on Italian discoveries 1665-1720

12The brief overview of the reception of Italian culture in Restoration England has shown that past models continued to be appreciated, and that they fuelled scholars’ scientific curiosity about the “Bel Paese”. Yet, it is also important to consider the most significant writings that the Royal Society published in Philosophical Transactions in the years 1665-1700: they were in letter form, and were addressed not only to its Fellows, but also to international readers.

13An Account of the Tryalls, made in Italy of Campani’s Optick Glasses appeared in Philosophical Transactions on January 8^th 1665. The “Great Duke of Tuskany, and Prince Leopold, his brother”29 were mentioned in the long title of the article, and it was clear that the Society’s network of contacts was large and varied, as it included scholars from most scientific branches. Who were they ? Carlo Fracassati (1630-1672), Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), Stefano Degli Angeli (1623-1697), Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671), and Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712), to name only a few. Members of the main universities in the north of Italy, Padua and Pisa especially, who provided accounts of the state of the art in the field of science, they were highly reputed for their discoveries and debates on the human body30, on animals31, and the motion of the earth32.

14It was between 1684 and 1686, however, that readers had accrued access to articles about the Roman ruins in England and on the Continent. One of the Royal Society’s first correspondents from the “Bel Paese”, Signor Sarotti, provided readers with a full description of the 1686 “Inundation of the Tevere”, and drew their attention to one of the “perpetual Lamp[s]” that the “Antient mention”. This very short letter “translated out of the Italian”33 shows that learned correspondents in the country also applied the principle of scientific observation to the study of Greek and Roman civilizations.

15Italy continued to interest the Fellows of the Royal Society until the end of the century, and quotations from the Classical past were used to write on the disastrous natural events of the time. In 1693, for instance, Alessandro Burgos (1666-1726), a Catholic Bishop from Catania, and professor of Metaphysics at the University of Padua, posited that it was difficult to “describe in a few Pages the mournful Iliads of Sicilia, in part ruined by the terrible Shakes of the late Earthquake”34; in 1694, Marcello Malpighi, one of the reputed physicians in the country, wrote several letters to the Royal Society, and reminded its Fellows of the destruction of Troy, of Aristotle, and Pliny35.

16The cultural crisis of Italy on the eve of the eighteenth century36 did not weaken the relation between science and Classical culture, Greek and Latin. Following the Society’s Fellows’ growing interest in archaeology37 – the letters that Dr. George Hickes (1642-1715) and Reverend Abraham de la Pryme (1672-1704) wrote on “Saxon antiquities” and on a “Roman pavement in Lincolnshire”, as well as the detailed study of the “Catacombs of Rome and Naples”38 confirmed that by 1700 the Grecian revival in England was in full swing – the accounts of the extraordinary geological and astronomic events in the Neapolitan area in the years 1717-1739 were given by English correspondents who quoted extensively from Borellus’ “Latin Treatise of Mount Etna”, and mentioned Augustus, Diodorus, and Vitruvius39.

17Yet scholars’ use of Greek and Latin scientific sources was only one of the aspects of the complex cultural phenomenon linking England to the “Bel Paese”. In fact, the relation between Inigo Jones’s study of Italian artistic treasures40, the Palladian vogue on the eve of the Enlightenment, and the early phases of the Grand Tour was immediately visible, and Rome in particular, with its ideals of formal “clarity” and “harmony41, inevitably became the most appealing city on the Continent42. Its ruins and monuments had been key elements in English academic exchanges and the symbol of Christianity since 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution; furthermore, from a cultural perspective, they had also embodied all the normative values of elite masculinity43. Taken from Richard Lassels’s popular The Voyage of Italy (1670), the guide that John Evelyn (1620-1706) used for his Diary (publ. 1818)44, and that Martin Folkes (1690-1754), President of The Royal Society in the years 1741-1752, mentioned in Philosophical Transactions in 174645, the following passage offers a precise idea about the “magnificence” that the city was endowed with, according to most visitors:

Rome was anciently styled the Head, and Mistresse of the world; an Earthly Goddesse; The Eternal City; The Compendium of the World; The Common Mother, and Nurse of all Virtues; (while she was yet Heathen;) Yet since her Ladyship was Baptized and became Christian (though she have had great Elogies made of her by the Holy Fathers) I find no Title so honorable to her as that of Roma la Santa, Rome the Holy […]: For whereas the other Cities of Italy are Proverbially called either Fair, Gentile, Rich, Proud, Fatte, or Great; as Florence, Naples, Venice, Genua, Bologna, Milan; Rome only is styled the Holy46.

18From 1720 on, Philosophical Transactions offered an alternative to the more traditional forms of odeporic literature, memoirs, journals, and correspondences. Although such a fruitful interchange of materials, as well as of information on the main cities in the “Bel Paese”, did not help readers in England to have a clearer understanding of the Grand Tour47, Rome continued to attract Britons’ attention until the early nineteenth century.

II. Along the Appian Way: Learned Academies and Grand Tourists to Naples (1720-1760)

The road is shamefully bad that leads to this great and fine City: But it is remote from its Sovereign, always govern’d by Viceroys, who perhaps have not thought the care of the Roads to be of so much Consequence, as to reserve their Notice.
The most pleasant Situation of Naples, with its large and delightful Bay, have been so fully described by Authors extant among us, that it wou’d be superfluous for me to attempt it. […] — If in Rome, and perhaps some other Cities, there are finer, and more magnificent Palaces, either the Narrowness of the Streets, or the comparative Meanness of the Private Houses, takes off from the general Beauty of those Places: But in Naples the Beauty of the Building is in great measure equal and uniform: the Streets are large, strait, and excellently well pav’d with flat Stones about 18 Inches square; and to prevent Horses slipping on them, they are pick’d or tool’d so as to give them a Roughness. The Tops of the Houses are flat, so as that you may walk on them, and there receive the Breeze of the Evening Breezes; they are cover’d with a hard Plaster. The Strada di Toledo is the principal Street, and is the noblest I ever saw, and of a great Length as well as Breadth. The Plenty of Provisions, and Frequency of People, make it as cheerful, as the Magnificence of the Buildings make it noble48.

19As time passed, Britons’ attraction to Italy increased, and travellers learned to accept the hardships and dangers that the journey down the Appian Way entailed49. Despite the lack of a royal court, and the frequent warfare in the region of Campania, they wanted to know more about southern people, their culture, and natural treasures: Mount Vesuvius and the ancient remains of the past, both Greek and Roman, were the main points of interest, and, by the mid eighteenth century, the capital city, Naples, became an essential part in the Grand Tour50.

20It is difficult in this light to underestimate the role that English learned academies played in that particular phase of the process. Scholarly debate on this subject has never explained how it came to be that in the late 1730s a stronger flux of foreigners decided to descend the ancient Via Appia, and visited the south of Italy and its archaeological sites. Recent research – Jeremy Black’s new edition of The British and the Grand Tour (2010), Rosemary Sweet’s Cities and the Grand Tour: the British in Italy 1690-1820 (2012)51, Michel Delon’s Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (2013)52, and Edward Chaney’s The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Relations since the Renaissance (2014)53, to name only a few – generally recognises that the discovery of the buried city of Herculaneum (1739) was at the root of that new trend, yet it does not seem to consider that English learned academies, particularly the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries (establ. 1707), and the Dilettanti Society (establ. 1732), may have actively contributed to the circulation of cultural information, as well as to the promotion of the region in those years54. Although there is detailed study of the city of Naples’ attributes, and of the main reasons why learned Britons wanted to discover it – once again, its historical treasures55, the beauty and power of Mount Vesuvius56, the mild climate and peaceful atmosphere in the surrounding areas57 – there is little discussion about the creation of that specific trend in the age of the Grand Tour, and the way it actually developed. In short, recent studies do not make clear how Italian destinations became popular among British learned travellers, and what actually changed their itineraries.

21The answer to these questions may be found in the large network of relations that the members of the above-mentioned societies had both in England and in Italy, as well as in their writings. The Dilettanti’s official “Limner”, for instance, George Knapton (1698-1778), who had been part of the Grand Tour circles in Rome in 1725-1732, visited the excavations at Herculaneum in 1739, and later submitted an article to Philosophical Transactions58. As for his Society’s detailed archaeological study of the Neapolitan area and of Greece, it resulted in the publication of such a celebrated work as the Antiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated, which appeared in three volumes between 1762 and 179459.

22George Knapton and the Dilettanti were not the only classicists who used their experiences as Grand Tourists to diffuse knowledge, and create new cultural trends. In a later period, William Hamilton (1730-1803), envoy to the King of England in Naples since 1764, and an expert collector of both antiquities and volcanic rocks, approached the Society of Dilettanti with a proposal to publish a book on Herculaneum, but failed. The product of his correspondence with the members of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries in the 1750s, his editorial project was important as it testified to both the multilevel collaboration of intellectuals and travellers with English learned academies and their desire to share information60.

1. Communicating Archaeology: The Discovery of Herculaneum and of the Classics (1739-1770)

23The circulation of cultural news through the English learned societies’ channels and the tourists’ private correspondence was a key element in the construction of new paths in southern Italy. However difficult it may be to determine the exact number of Britons who visited Campania after the discovery of the buried city of Herculaneum, the names included in the Bibliography of British and American Travel in Italy to 1860 (1974), and the two-volume anthology of Viaggiatori britannici a Napoli nel ’700 (1999), show that the event had a significant impact on the evolutionary phases of the Grand Tour61.

24Of course, it was not just a question of figures. Recent research62 provides several examples of English travellers who toured Naples for its artistic treasures even before 1739, yet it is a fact that Mount Vesuvius had been the main attraction in Campania before the city was discovered. The first article on the volcanic activities in the area appeared in the Royal Society’s journal in 1665-166663, and there were more contributions in 171764, 173065, and 173966.

25Once again, however, by the end of the 1730s, it was possible to find evidence of learned Britons’ growing interest in the region. The issues n. 37-40 show that news from the rest of Italy had become marginalised, and that both the English scientific community and Grand Tourists were more and more attracted to the Classical remains of the past in southern regions.

26New directions from the point of view of communication were taken in 1739. Learned correspondents continued to write in letter form67, but laid the basis for scientific archaeology, and even enlarged their network of Anglo-Italian relations. Their commitment was systematically encouraged by Charles VII of Naples (1716-1788), who decided to make the exploration of the Roman world in the Bay of Naples a state affair and “a major cultural undertaking”. The process, which had its roots in the publication of the first discoveries in the Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia in 1711, was controlled by Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre (c. 1702-1780), a Spanish military engineer, who surveyed the site and began a formal excavation in 1738, and by Camillo Paderni (c. 1715-1781), a painter from Rome who would be appointed Bourbon Keeper of the Royal Museum at Portici from 1751 to 178168.

27There is little detailed information about Paderni and the corpus of his private correspondence69, yet there is evidence that he had very good English connections, that he officially entered the Royal Society in 1755, and that he chose Philosophical Transactions as the only communication channel to inform learned Britons on the state of the art in the Herculaneum archaeological area. The Society’s Fellows read the letter where he listed the first finds there on November 20^th 1739. The addressee was Alan Ramsay (1713-1784), a Scottish portrait painter based in Rome, who would also be admitted to the Society of Antiquaries in 1741:

SIR,
YOU may remember, I told you in one of my former Letters, that the King of Naples was become a Virtuoso, and had made a Discovery of a subterraneous Town at Portici, a small village at the Foot of Mount Vesuvius; and that our old Friend Sigr Gioseppe Couart, as Sculptor to the King, had the Care of the Statues found there, with Orders to restore them, where they are damaged. Within these few Days he is returned hither to settle his Affairs, and has informed me of some of the Particulars, in such a manner as very much incites my Curiosity, and Desire of communicating them to the Public, by making Designs of them on the Spot, He tells me, they enter into this Place by a Pit, like a Well, to the Depth of Eighty-eight Neapolitan Palms; and they dig their way (after the manner of our Catacombs) under the bituminous Matter, thrown out of the Mountain in the Time of great Eruptions, and called by the People of the Country, the Lava, which is as hard as a Flint. And when they meet with any thing that seems valuable, they pick it out, and leave the rest. […] They have already found the following Things:
An Amphitheatre, with its Steps.
An Equestrian Statue, but all broken to Pieces.
A Chariot and Horses of Brass, which have had the same Fate.
A large brassen Dish, said to be found in a Temple.
They have also dug out many other Bronzes, with several Statues and Bas-relieves, which Sigr Gioseppe is now restoring70.

28This extract was essential to arouse Britons’ curiosity about the treasures of the Bay of Naples, and to include both the city and the region in their itineraries in the “Bel Paese”. The fact that it was immediately followed by two Letters from Mr. George Knapton demonstrates that the exchange of information was tightly connected with travel and the Grand Tour, and that even cross-cultural issues were a point of interest for readers. The Dilettante’s account of his visit of Herculaneum, in fact, was based not only on the description of “many fine Statues”, and of “some Ornaments and Fragments of various sorts of Marbles”, but also on “a small Square, surrounded with miserable Houses, filled with miserable ugly Women”71.

29Yet, the main priority for learned visitors was Classical art. Deeply inspired by the so-called “Herculaneum Women”, the first significant finds made by Prince d’Elboeuf (1677-1763) in 1709-1711, most English correspondents and travellers in Naples were sculptors and painters who needed to adapt to, and possibly reproduce, their high formal standards.

30Prince Hoare (d. 1769), “[a] young Statuary […] pursuing his Studies in Rome” was one of them. His A short Account of some of the principal antique Pictures found in the Ruins of Herculaneum was divided into several monographic sections on the “Curiosities” there, and it was read at a meeting of the Royal Society on October 22^nd 1747. The one that follows is number five:

Two large Pictures were in a Nich in a Basilica, about five or six feet high. The first represents Theseus victorious over the Minotaur. He is standing in a free and fine posture: One foot is on the Head of the Minotaur. But what seemed odd to me was the figure of the Monster itself, which I had always seen differently represented, for in this Picture the Head only represents that of a Bull, which is joined to the Body of a Man. Several little Genii or Cupids (as we call them), all seem impatient to shew their respect to their Deliverer: One kisses his Hand, another clasps round his Leg, and several others in Attitude of Gratitude. The Figures are almost as large as small Life72.

31Philosophical Transactions continued to publish letters from English correspondents at the huge archaeological site. There were more and more statues, pictures, and volumes of “papyrus” to describe73, however, there was also space for haunting doubts on the “pretended city of Herculaneum”. The following extract is taken from Camillo Paderni’s letter to Thomas Hollis Esq. (1720-1774), dated 27^th April 1754:

I say pretended, because it is my own opinion, that the place, where they have dug for so time past, and actually do now dig, is not Herculaneum, but a different place from it, tho’ almost contiguous to it; as I could easily make appear, was I at liberty to write: But time will clear up this matter. My duty made it necessary for me to descend into it almost daily; and when my business was done, I always indulged my curiosity and genius in viewing and examining the several objects there74.

32Although Pompeii (1748) and Paestum (1752) had already been discovered, the Roman ruins near Portici were a key issue in Philosophical Transaction until 1759. In 1757, Rev. John Nixon (d. 1777), a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1744, wrote an Account of the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli in the Kingdom of Naples75; as for Camillo Paderni, he finished his list of finds on the site with a detailed description of the disastrous natural events in the Vesuvius area. His reference to the “violent explosions” and “immense quantities of stones, lava, ashes and fire”76 metaphorically prepared learned readers for a new form of interest in the south of Italy in the second half of the century.

33Probably influenced by the new Pre-Romantic vogue, as well as the latest studies in geology, in the decades 1760-1780, English visitors rediscovered the charm of natural beauties: Roman ruins gradually lost their appeal, and the Grand Tour became even longer, as it also included Sicily.

2. Lava, ashes, and fire: Sublime Nature in the Kingdom of Naples (1760-1790)

34As time passed, Philosophical Transactions became the only scientific journal which could provide a realistic description of the cultural changes in the Grand Tour. In 1761, a new account on Mount Vesuvius was given to English learned readers, and that was evidence of the scientific community’s latest geological interests:

The mountain, which was quiet in the morning, with scarce any visible smoke, threw up on a sudden, about noon, a vast column of black, which rose to a very considerable height; and, before it had diffused itself, made a splendid and glorious appearance, as the sun, which was shining, gilded the superior part of it; but soon after, it dispersed, and covered all the mountain, and a great portion of the sky in that quarter. The ashes, that fell from it, resembled the falling of a heavy shower, seen at a distance, and must have done great mischief, if any living thing was under them. […] Portici might be within its influence; but the body of the smoke seemed to go beyond it; I mean, that it passed on the south-east side of it, which is beyond it, reckoning from Naples77.

35Mentioning both Portici and Naples, the author of this extract, Frances Haskins Eyles-Stiles (d. 1762), ideally linked his description to the past and current issues of the prestigious journal. The pages of Philosophical Transactions continued to be rich in references to the ancient world, particularly to Greek, Etruscan, and Roman numismatics – this was the product of the contacts the Royal Society had with the Accademia degli Apatisti in Florence – yet the new generation’s curiosity for Italian volcanoes was too difficult to stop, or even to balance.

36It was not by chance that in the years 1679-1786 news about Campania and Sicily was only given by “the Honourable William Hamilton”. His 1769 Particulars on Mount Vesuvius appeared in vol. 59 of Philosophical Transactions, and clearly expressed the latest cultural trends. Their main components were science and Pre-Romantic tropes on Nature78:

Besides the lightning, which perfectly resembled the common forked lightning, there were many meteors, like what are vulgarly called falling stars. […] The last day of the eruption, the ashes, which fell abundantly upon the mountain, were as white as snow; and the old people here assure me, that is a sure symptom of the eruption is at the end79.

37During his long stay in Naples, the Ambassador greatly contributed to the development of Anglo-British diplomatic relations, and to the final phases of the Grand Tour. Although he and his sumptuous villa in Portici were the reference points for English politicians, scientists, and men of culture from 1764 to 1800, his constant interest in volcanology was crucial in the circulation and innovation of culture80.

38Of course, his Campi Phlegraei (1766)81 could not be ignored. It was the first text in modern volcanology on Vesuvius and Etna82, and it anticipated the Comte de Buffon’s Les Époques de la Nature (1778), James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth (1788), as well Georges Cuvier’s Theory of the Earth (1813): however, there was more than his scientific competence and international prestige in such a complex process.

39In fact, the emergence of geology entailed a thorough investigation of the “historicity of the earth”, and of the concept of “deep time”. If syncretism and closer links between science and the humanities was all readers expected, we may understand why, in the years 1780-1786, Philosophical Transactions only accepted to publish the Ambassador’s “highly eventful narratives” of the active volcanoes in southern Italy83. The following extract, taken from An Account of an Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which happened in August 1779, describes his ascent – and careful observation of – the most dangerous volcano at the time:

In the month of May last, there was a considerable eruption of Mount Vesuvius, when I passed a night on the mountain in the company of one of my country men, as eager as myself in the pursuit of this branch of natural history.
We saw the operation of the lava, in the channels as abovementioned; in the greatest perfection […]. After [it] had quitted its regular channels, it spread itself in the valley, and being loaded with scoriae, ran gently on, like a river that had been frozen, and had masses of ice floating on it: the wind changing when we were close to this gentle stream of lava[.] […] [O]ur guide proposed the expedient of walking across it; […] the crust […] was so tough, besides being loaded with cinders and scoriae, that our weight made not the least impression on it, and its motion was so slow, that we were not in any danger of losing our balance and falling on it: however, this experiment should not be tried except in cases of real necessity84.

40As can be seen, his experience was in perfect harmony with Burke’s aesthetic ideal of the sublime, and it greatly differed from Joseph Addison’s or even Edward Wright’s at the beginning of the century85. Their descriptions of the landscape and of the type of nature they saw there in the years 1701-1703, and in 1720, were definitely more literary; as for Johann Georg Keyssler (1693-1743), another Fellow of the Royal Society who visited Naples in 1729, and published Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorrain in 175686, he also quoted from the Latin poet Martial to confirm that the volcano was extremely fertile87.

41Hamilton’s purely scientific vision of reality was in perfect harmony with the learned readers of Philosophical Transactions. His An Account of the Earthquakes which happened in [the south of] Italy appeared in 1783, and it was meant to draw their attention to the motion of the earth:

I am happy now to have it in my power to give you, and my brethren of the Royal Society, some little idea of the infinite damage done, and of the various damage exhibited, by the earthquakes […] in the two Calabrias, at Messina, and in the parts of Sicily nearest to the continent. From the most authentic reports, and accounts received at the offices of his Sicilian Majesty’s secretary of state, we gathered in general, that […] from the 5^th of February, the earth continued to be in a continual tremor; more or less; and that the shocks were more sensibly felt at times in some parts of the afflicted provinces than in others; that the motion of the earth had been various, and, according to the Italian denomination, vorticoso, orizzontale, and oscillatorio […]; that this variety of motion had increased the apprehensions of the unfortunate inhabitants in those parts, who expected that the earth would open under their feet, and swallow them up; that the rains had been continual and violent, often accompanied with lightning and irregular and furious grafts of wind; that from all these causes the face of the earth of Calabria […] was entirely altered, particularly on the westward side of [those mountains of the Appennines called the Monte Deio, Monte Sacro, and Monte Caulone]88.

42The last news from Campania dated back to 1786. Hamilton published a detailed narrative of his journey to the island of Ponza in issue 76 of the prestigious London journal. His “creative” view of volcanoes, as well as scientific convictions in the field of “natural history” demonstrated that the Grand Tour had undergone dramatic changes:

The more opportunities I have of examining this volcanic country, the more I am convinced of the truth of what I have already ventured to advance, which is, that volcanoes should be considered in a creative rather than a destructive light. […] I have remarked, that young observers in this branch of natural history are but too apt to fall into the dangerous error of limiting the order to their confined ideas […]. It cannot be too strongly recommended to observers in this, as well as in every other branch of natural history, not to be over-hasty in their decisions, nor to attribute every production they meet to a single operation of nature, which has undergone various, of which I have given examples in the island which has been the principle subject of this letter89.

The Royal Society and the English Grand Tourists in Southern Italy: Final Remarks

43A complete survey of the Royal Society’s archives shows that news from Italy and its southern regions gradually disappeared from Philosophical Transactions at the end of the century90. However, the Anglo-Italian network of travellers-savants was already large, and southern Italy was definitely more popular than in the past: evidence can be found not only in the greater number of English visitors to the Kingdom of Naples, but also in the writings and pieces of art that they left. A clearer understanding of the relations between the Royal Society and the Grand Tour of Campania and Sicily will have to be based not only on the role of English learned academies, but also on their Fellows’ ability to disseminate information and to direct fluxes of voyagers to that specific part of the Continent.

44This paper has shown that the emergence of the Grand Tour as a socio-cultural phenomenon had its roots in the persistence of Italian Renaissance tropes in Stuart England, as well in the Royal Society’s specific interest in the “Bel Paese” since 1665: the articles that appeared in Philosophical Transactions actually fuelled learned Britons’ curiosity on the eve of the Enlightenment, and, from 1739 to 1786, even encouraged them to go beyond the borders of Central Italy, thus including the city of Naples in their itineraries.

45The key role that Camillo Paderni played in this process has already been considered. The first letter that he wrote on the discovery of the buried city of Herculaneum in 1739 appeared in vol. 41 of Philosophical Transactions, and represented the beginning of a new travel trend: from that moment on, in fact, more letters and accounts by English correspondents from that archaeological area were published in specialized journals, and greater numbers of tourists chose to visit Naples and its Kingdom.

46A thorough analysis of the construction of new itineraries in the south of Italy is required and will have to be based on the Philosophical Transactions’s impact on its readership – David Kronick maintains that the number of copies that were distributed never exceeded one thousand, but that its penetration was higher as it was tied to the abstracts, reviews, and reprints of articles that appeared in several periodicals both in Great Britain and on the Continent91 – as well as on the large network of Fellows and tourists-savants who met in international salons and exchanged information. In fact, apart from figures, we should always consider that most of the Grand Tourists who wrote travel accounts or memoirs of their visits in the Italian south were Fellows of the Royal Society.

47George Turnbull (1698-1748), the eclectic philosopher who illustrated A Treatise of Ancient Painting (1740) during his stay in Rome, Alan Ramsay, and Thomas Hollis, witnessed to the first “discovery” of Naples, and were closely connected with the figure of Camillo Paderni. Fellows of the Royal Society, Ramsay and Hollis in particular had a solid classical background, and shared the same artistic values as George Knapton and his Dilettanti. Yet, in the years 1740-1760, there were other exceptional travellers-savants who were not part of the intellectual circles of the Bourbon Keeper of the Portici Museum, but who equally contributed to circulate information on the Italian south: Edward Wright (1666-1761), a language teacher based in Naples, Johann Georg Keyssler (1693-1743), an archaeologist, and John Howard (1726-1791), a philanthropist: they were all Fellows of the Royal Society, and provided their contemporaries with descriptions of the Neapolitan area which echoed the contents (and style) of Philosophical Transactions.

48The emergence of geology and volcanology in the 1760s maintained and perhaps even strengthened the relation between the prestigious London society and the Grand Tour. Apart from John Moore (1729-1804), a Scottish physician and Fellow of the Royal Society who included a series of letters from Naples in A View of Society in France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy (1775)92, Lucio Fino confirms93 that Thomas Jones (1742-1803) and John Robert Cozens (1752-1797) were two of the most active members of William Hamilton’s cosmopolitan salon at Palazzo Sessa. Another Fellow of the Royal Society, and a distinguished watercolorist, Jones lived in Naples in 1778-1779, and offered the Ambassador beautiful views of Naples; Cozens, instead, a draftsman and a painter, became William Beckford’s protégé after the philosopher Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824) left for Sicily in 177794.

49The network of those who were officially linked to the Royal Society, and who visited Naples in the second half of the century, was definitely larger than it was before 1739. Further study of this aspect of the Grand Tour, in fact, will have to include Samuel Sharp’s collection of critical Letters from Italy (1767)95, Charles Burney (1726-1814) and his The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771)96, as well as Kenneth Mackenzie (1744-1781), Chief of the Highland Clan of Mackenzie, and a member of the most exclusive circles of Grand Tourists in the south of Italy. The cultural significance of their literary production was apparent, but their special ability to promote Campania and Sicily made a significant difference.

50The list of English exceptional visitors in the 1770s-1790s may be continued. Patrick Brydone (1741-1819), though, deserves all the modern reader’s attention. Another Scottish Fellow of the Royal Society who published A Tour through Sicily and Malta. In a Series of Letters to William Beckford in 177397, he has recently been rediscovered by contemporary critics98, and almost considered as popular as Henry Swinburne (1743-1803), the author of Travels in the Two Sicilies (1778)99. An original work, testifying to the Grand Tourists’ new attraction to Etna and Sicily, his Tour carefully described Mount Etna, “its torrents of fire”, and “dreadful noises”100. Once again, his “highly eventful narratives” on the Sicilian volcano were not only in harmony with the cultural and scientific trends of the time, but also witnessed to the travellers-savants’ tight connections with English learned societies. Particularly the Royal Society.

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