Eighteenth-century art lovers flocked to Italy. Artists and collectors travelled across Europe to view the treasures of Rome, Venice, Florence and Naples. For British aristocrats, a portrait by Pompeo Batoni or a Roman scene by Giovanni Paolo Panini were highly desirable souvenirs of this ‘Grand Tour.’
Every year, the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris sent a handful of its best students to study in Rome. They spent years there, copying Antique and Renaissance art. Some, like Louis Jean François Lagrenée, directly emulated the Italian Baroque paintings they had seen. Others, like Claude-Joseph Vernet, brought the Italian light and landscape into their own work.
But travel worked in both directions. When the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) stopped British patrons from travelling to Venice, Canaletto set out for England. He spent nine years here painting English scenes. His nephew Bernardo Bellotto also took the tradition of Venetian view painting north, working at the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Warsaw.
