Maps and the Italian Grand Tour: Meanings, Mobilities and Materialities in George III’s Topographical Collection, 1540-1789 Jeremy Nicholas Wilkins Brown Department of Geography Royal Holloway, University of London Submitted for the degree of PhD 1 Declaration of authorship I, Jeremy Nicholas Wilkins Brown, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ________________________________________ Date: __________________________________________ 2 Acknowledgements Over the past four years, my supervisors, Veronica della Dora and Peter Barber, have been a constant source of wisdom, inspiration and encouragement. They have both shared their knowledge willingly and enthusiastically and I owe them the greatest debt of gratitude for their help – in too many ways to count – in bringing this project to completion. A special mention must also go to Felix Driver from the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway and Tom Harper from the British Library for reading and commenting on draft chapters of the thesis, their advice has pushed it forward to no end. Many others have made this thesis possible in one way or another. I have learned so much from the members of the Social, Cultural and Historical Geography group at Royal Holloway; I would especially like to thank those teachers who were happy for me to sit in on classes during my first year. All those who engaged with my work at conferences or talks contributed invaluably to the development of this thesis’s ideas and arguments. I am particularly grateful to Catherine Delano-Smith for her encouragement over presenting at the Maps and Society lecture series, which was so beneficial to the argument of Chapter 5. My friends and family have supported me throughout the project, offering sympathetic ears as well as light relief. For her endless support and for reading through drafts of chapters, making invaluable comments, Harriet Marsden has been a shining light throughout this process. I am grateful to Jordana Dym for allowing me to see her essay “Travel and Cartography” in advance of its publication. This thesis has been generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Library, and Royal Holloway, University of London. 3 Abstract This thesis is concerned with the use of maps by British grand tourists to Italy during the early modern period. Primarily, it studies the cartographic material contained within the British Library’s King George III’s Topographical Collection, formerly part of his private reference library (before it was donated to the British Museum). The usefulness of maps for Grand Tour journeys has frequently been assumed in historical narratives but discussion is generally cursory, instead favouring the important literary productions or artistic collections that resulted from touring. This thesis applies concepts developed in the history of cartography, the history of the book and visual and material culture studies in order to explore travellers’ interactions with maps of Italy. Divided into four thematic chapters that deal in turn with the topics of education, topography, travel and return, the thesis examines when and how maps were deployed by British travellers on the Italian Grand Tour. Having introduced the aims, objectives and key themes of the thesis, Chapter 1 locates the Grand Tour in the history and historiography of travel, whilst also dealing with the growth of map collecting in the early modern period. In Chapter 2, I review theoretical understandings of the nature of maps, showing how these have underpinned my research framework, but have also been complemented by methodological exchanges with visual and material culture studies. Chapter 3 explores the theme of education: how and what did British travellers learn about Italy through maps. It centres on a case study that describes and analyses annotated maps that were seemingly used for geography homework, most likely assigned to King George III when he was Prince of Wales. Interactions between myth and geography in the production of maps of Calabria are the focus of Chapter 4; the imaginations of both the mapmaker and the map user are shown to be significant to the complex and changing genre of topography in the early modern period. In Chapter 5, I address maps that were more specifically designed for wayfinding. After surveying the history of written itineraries and the display of roads and post houses on maps of Italy, I concentrate on the sudden growth and pirating of printed strip-map atlases of Italy in the 1770s. Questions about the role of maps in self-fashioning after return from a 4 Grand Tour are considered in Chapter 6, which analyses the role of maps in Grand Tour portraits by the eighteenth-century Italian artist Pompeo Batoni. The narrative provided by this thesis has a twofold ambition: to highlight the King’s Topographical Collection as a rich and broadly overlooked archival resource and to redress some of the balance that has been weighted against maps as an aspect of study in the context of the Grand Tour. Blurring the boundaries between map history, art history and cultural geography (among other humanistic disciplines), the thesis combines recent theoretical developments concerning the processual nature of maps with an appreciation for maps as physical objects, as well as visual artefacts and cultural representations of space. This leads to an analysis that details the numerous and creative ways in which maps were not only put to work by but also influenced British travellers, demonstrating that maps were a vital presence in the material culture of the Grand Tour. 5 Contents Declaration of authorship …………………………………………………………………………………….. 2 Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………….. 3 Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 Contents …………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 List of illustrations …………………………………………………………………………………….. 7 List of tables …………………………………………………………………………………….. 12 List of abbreviations …………………………………………………………………………………….. 12 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………….. 13 Chapter 1 Mapping literatures of the Grand Tour …………………………………………………………………………………….. 22 Chapter 2 Researching the Italian volumes: A processual approach to map history …………………………………………………………………………………….. 50 Chapter 3 Education …………………………………………………………………………………….. 87 Chapter 4 Topography …………………………………………………………………………………….. 124 Chapter 5 Travel …………………………………………………………………………………….. 166 Chapter 6 Return …………………………………………………………………………………….. 209 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………….. 247 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………….. 257 6 List of illustrations 1.1 J. Gibson, An Accurate Map, of His R. H. the Duke of York’s Journey thro’ Italy in 1763 & 1764, in The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle 34, London: Printed for D. Henry and R. Cave at St. John’s Gate, 1764: facing page 432 ……………………………. 24 2.1 Fingerprints over the gulf of Venice. Detail of Stefano Scolari, Golfo di Venetia overo Mare Adriatico, Venice, 1660. BL Maps K.Top.79.12. …………………………………………………………….. 67 2.2 Boxes of the General Atlas in the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum. Volumes 75 to 78 would have held material on Italy as a whole and large parts of northern Italy …………………… 74 3.1 George Knapton, The Family of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 1751. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019 … 88 3.2 Richard Wilson, Francis Ayscough with the Prince of Wales (later King George III) and Edward Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, ca. 1749. © National Portrait Gallery, London ……………………… 89 3.3 John Spilsbury, Europe divided into its Kingdoms &c., London, 1766. © The British Library Board. Maps 188.v.12. ………………... 99 3.4 Giacomo Filippo Ameti, Il Lazio, con le sue piu cospicue strade, antiche e moderne e principali casali e tenute di esso. Parte Prima Maritima, Rome: Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, 1693. © The British Library Board. Maps K.Top.81.5. ……………………………………. 112 3.5 Giacomo Filippo Ameti, Il Lazio, con le sue piu cospicue strade, antiche e moderne e principali casali e tenute di esso. Parte Prima Terrestre, Rome: Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, 1693. © The British Library Board. Maps K.Top.81.5. …………………………………….. 113 3.6 Pierre Duval, La Sicile, Avec les anciens noms de presque toutes ses Places, Riveres, Chasteaux et diverses observations nouvelles, Paris: Rue Froimanteau [Pierre Moullart-Sanson], [after 1710]. © The British Library Board. Maps K.Top.84.15. ………………………….. 115 7 3.7 Joseph Archivolti Cavassi, L’Isle et Royaume de Sicile, Paris: Nicolas de Fer, 1714. © The British Library Board. Maps K.Top.84.21. …………………………………………………………….. 118 3.8 Wettstein (?) handwriting: A comparison between BL Add. MS 38417 f. 266r and the annotations on BL Maps K.Top.84.15. ……... 121 4.1 Abraham Ortelius, Ulyssis Errores ex Conatib. Geographicis, London: John Norton, 1606. Maps 9.TAB.8. ………………………... 142 4.2 Anonymous, Regno di Napoli, Venice: alla Libreria della Stella [Giordano Ziletti], 1557. © The British Library Board. Maps K.Top.83.2. ……………………………………………………………… 144 4.3 Pirro Ligorio, Nova regni Neapolitani descriptio, Rome: Michele Tramezzino, 1558. © The British Library Board. Maps K.Top.83.3. 145 4.4 Ogygia and the Capo Colonna. Detail of Pirro Ligorio, Nova regni Neapolitani descriptio, Rome: Michele Tramezzino, 1558. © The British Library Board. Maps K.Top.83.3. …………………………… 146 4.5 Ostia and Rome. Detail of Pirro Ligorio, Nova regni Neapolitani descriptio, Rome: Michele Tramezzino,