"Classic Ground": Britain, Italy, and the Grand Tour

Edward Chaney. The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance (Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 1998). Pp. 432. $59.50. ISBN 0-7146-4577-x. $29.50 paper. ISBN 0-7146-4474-9

Philip Ayres. Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1997). Pp.265. 30 ills. £47.50. ISBN 0-521-58490-6

John Ingamells, comp. A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800, compiled from the Brinsley Ford Archive (New Haven: Yale Univ. for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1997). Pp.1200. $150. ISBN 0-300-07165-5

Andrew Wilton and Ilaria Bignamini, eds. Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (London: Tate Gallery, 1996). Pp.329. $65. ISBN 1-85437-188-6

Clare Hornsby, ed. The Impact of Italy: The Grand Tour and Beyond (London: British School at Rome, 2000). Pp. 272. 53 ills. £36. ISBN 0-9041-52-32-4

Shearer West, ed. Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century . Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1999). Pp.252. 32 ills. £45. ISBN 0-521-55223-0

Edgar Peters Bowron and Joseph J. Rishel, eds. Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century (London: Merrell in assoc. with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000). Pp.624. 500 ills. $95. ISBN 1-85894-098-2

Jonathan Scott. The Pleasures of Antiquity: British Collectors of Greece and Rome (New Haven: Yale Univ. for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2003). Pp. 348. 204 ills. $50. ISBN 0-300-09854-5

Bruce Redford. Venice and the Grand Tour, 1670-1830 (New Haven: Yale Univ., 1996). Pp. 137. $45. ISBN 0-30006-911-1

Brian Dolan. Ladies of the Grand Tour. (London: HarperCollins, 2001). Pp. 352. $27 paper. ISBN 0060185430

Bernard D. Frischer and Iain Gordon Brown, eds. Allan Ramsay and the Search for Horace's Villa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). Pp. 203. 92 ills. $104.95. ISBN 0-7546-0004-1

Cynthia O' Connor. The Pleasing Hours: The Grand Tour of James Caulfeild, First Earl of Charlemont (1728-1799), Traveller, Connoisseur, and Patron of the Arts (Cork: Collins, 1999). Pp.288. $35.95. ISBN 1-898256-66-7

Keith Crook, ed. Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters during an Excursion in Italy, in the Years 1802 and 1803 by Joseph Forsyth, Esq. (Newark: Univ. of Delaware, 2001). Pp. 319. $47.50. ISBN 0-87413-756-x

Frank Salmon. Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). Pp. 264. 200 ills. £55. ISBN 0-7546-0358-x

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Over the past decade the complex and fruitful interchanges between Britain and Italy by means of the Grand Tour have undergone major reassessments, signalled by exhibitions in London, Philadelphia, and Rome, and by an exceptional number of publications. The significance of these reassessments is largely due to the expansion of interdisciplinary studies, as has been promoted by this journal, where tunnel-vision specialization has been replaced by a recognition of the shared cultural values and interaction between the visual and performing arts, literature, and politics. Moreover, the study of images and symbols reflecting intellectual and moral forces, pioneered in Renaissance studies, as well as a greater attention to sociological factors, has also helped break down conventional boundaries of study. The traditional view of the Grand Tour as confined to the narrow world of a political male elite has been replaced by a new awareness of the far-reaching influences of this cultural institution throughout western society, as well as of the complex and varied social backgrounds of all those involved. At the heart of this exceptional phenomenon is the protean nature of the classical tradition, derived from Greek and Roman Antiquity, and transmitted from the Renaissance, through the age of the Enlightenment to the world of Romanticism. Although the dramatic archaeological discoveries of the ancient...