ACHI
ASCH
Travelling Memories
Grand Tour and Roman Antiquity
in 17th- and 18th-Century Portraiture
Dr Miriam Volmert
University of Zurich, Institute of Art History
Thursday May 21, 17:00 h.
PC Hoofthuis 1.04
Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam
The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception
Organised by the ASCH Research Group:
Cultural Memory, Rhetoric, and Literary Discourse
Dr. Jeroen Jansen║ Dr. Kristine Johanson
Abstract
This paper examines seventeenth- and eighteenth-century portraits of Grand Tour travellers,
focussing on visual concepts of displaying, remembering and reflecting on Roman antiquity.
Especially from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, when the European Grand Tour had become
a pervasive phenomenon, numerous travellers commissioned large portraits of themselves during
their stay in Italy, which served as travel souvenirs and depicted them in close connection with
well-known features of classical Rome.
These portraits have generally been discussed within a broader perspective on collecting and
trading, or with a focus on the identification of the sitters and the close network of travellers. Yet
there remain open questions with regard to the specific combinations of painted accessories,
motifs and poses, which until now have only been defined rather broadly as a visual “Grand Tour
formula” – as a code to confirm the sitter’s trip to Italy’s classical sites and express his interest in
ancient Roman culture.
In my paper, I aim to take a closer look at the pictorial means of displaying knowledge and
experience of antiquity. Depictions of travellers will be discussed against the backdrop of the
British and Dutch portrait tradition and the related concepts of memoria and fama. By highlighting
the changing functions of pictorial topics, such as the relation between the gesturing figure and
explanatory background scenery, the paper intends to explore in which ways the pictures reflect
on rhetorical topoi of remembering and thereby develop a specific rhetorical framework portraying
travelling as a virtue.
About
Miriam Volmert is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. Her
research interests include early modern Dutch painting, eighteenth-century British and Italian art
and Grand Tour culture and the history of memory concepts.
She is the author of the book Grenzzeichen und Erinnerungsräume: Holländische Identität in
Landschaftsbildern des 15.–17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013). She is currently
working on a study on eighteenth-century Grand Tour portraiture and souvenirs in relation to
historical concepts of memory, remembrance, experiencing and learning.