Shapes of souvenir : Venetian views: English recollections of the Grand Tour

Abstract

An enquiry into the conception and making of 18th-century Venetian cityscapes collected as souvenirs by English travellers during the Grand Tour. These drawings and paintings are analysed as memorials of their authors’ pictorial practice, rather than as ‘finished’ pieces, in order to allow possible patterns of thought to emerge and to verify coincidences and differences with extant critical interpretations of these artworks seen in a historical context. This exploration of visual remembrance in relation to Venetian topography intends to shift the focus from consumption to the production of mnemonic cityscapes, while it considers repercussions in polity and the economy. Practices of contemporary English landscape painters are compared and contrasted to corroborate the visual analysis of Venetian pictorial souvenirs.