Synopses & Reviews
This is the first multi-disciplinary study of the dissemination of Italian culture in northern Europe during the "long eighteenth century" (1689-1815). The book covers a diverse range of important artists such as Amigoni, Canaletto and Rosalba Carriera, as well as opera singers, commedia dell'arte performers and librettists who left Italy to seek work beyond the Alps. It also considers key themes such as social networks, the relationships between court and market cultures, the importance of religion and politics to the reception of culture, and the evolution of taste.
Review
"..this is a learned, insightful, and challenging book, highly recommended to all scholars and graduate students interested in the diplomacy of the ancien régime." The International History Review
Synopsis
A 1999 study of how Italian artists and performers influenced taste and high culture in northern Europe in the eighteenth century.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: visual culture, performance culture and the Italian diaspora in the long eighteenth century Shearer West; 2. Friends serving itinerant muses: Jacopo Amigoni and Farinelli in Europe Leslie Griffin Hennessey; 3. Gender and internationalism: the case of Rosalba Carriera Shearer West; 4. '[T]hose loose and immodest pieces ...': Italian art and the British point of view Nigel Llewellyn; 5. Venice on the Thames: Venetian vedutisti and the London view in the eighteenth century John Eglin; 6. Xenophobia and xenomania: Italians and the English Royal Academy Shearer West; 7. Metastasio and the image of majesty in the Austro-Italian baroque Don Neville; 8. Italian opera singers on a European market John Rosselli; 9. The Théâtre Italien in France Robert Kenny; 10. Gustaf III and Italian culture Neil Kent.